Archived: Poole Road Medical Centre

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Poole Road Medical Centre on 6 May 2015.

Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing caring, responsive, well-led and effective services for older people, people with long term conditions, families, children and young people, working age people, people whose circumstances may make them vulnerable and people experiencing poor mental health. It required improvement for providing safe services.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. Information about safety was recorded and addressed;

• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed, with the exception of those relating to recruitment checks and management of medicines;

• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance;

• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment;

• The practice provided patient’s a printed copy of their summary care record to take with them to A&E;

• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand;

• Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with a named GP and that there was continuity of care, with urgent appointments available the same day;

• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs;

• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management;

• 80% of respondents to a national patient survey said their overall experience of the practice was good;

• Poole Road Medical Centre is also a training practice for doctors training to be GPs and medical students; and

• The practice also used the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) to measure their performance. The QOF data for this practice showed it in 2013/14 they had met 98.4% of the outcomes. This was higher than the national average for GP practices.

However, there were also areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.

Importantly, the provider must:

• Carry out disclosure and barring service checks or risk assessments for staff who performed chaperone duties;

• Prescription forms must be logged and tracked through the practice;

• Ensure patient group directions are authorised by a clinician; and

• Ensure staff recruitment checks follow current legislation.

In addition the provider should:

• Ensure records of staff appraisals are kept;

• Operate a programme of clinical audits; and

• Ensure toys kept at the practice are included in cleaning schedules.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice