• Doctor
  • GP practice

Urban Village Medical Practice

Overall: Outstanding read more about inspection ratings

Old Mill Street, Manchester, Lancashire, M4 6EE (0161) 272 5656

Provided and run by:
Urban Village Medical Practice

All Inspections

During an assessment under our new approach

Urban Village Medical Practice is a GP practice and delivers service to 13,562 patients under a contract held with NHS England.

Information published by Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows that deprivation within the practice population group is 1. Population areas are divided into 10 groups (or deciles), numbered 1 to 10. The lower the number of the population group (or decile), the more deprived the population, relative to the local area.

The practice is contracted to provide the Homeless Health Service for homeless people living on the streets of Manchester City Centre and, those residing in a number of hostels and shelters around Manchester City. This is a specialist and intensive service. Leaders reported this was about 700 people.

The homeless service is a team made up of designated and specially trained doctors, nurses, drugs and alcohol workers, outreach workers and a social prescriber.

This assessment considered the demographics of the people using the service, the context the service was working within and, how this impacted service delivery.

 

Where relevant, further commentary is provided in the quality statements section of this report.

The Urban Village Medical Practice had a good learning culture and people could raise concerns. Managers investigated incidents thoroughly.

At the time of the inspection some systems related to safeguarding needed to be strengthened.

Staff understood and managed most risks well.

The facilities and equipment, met the needs of people, were clean and well-maintained and risks were mitigated.

There were enough staff with the right skills, qualifications and experience. Managers made sure staff received specialist training and regular appraisals to maintain high-quality care.

Staff managed medicines well and were skilful at involving people in planning any changes.

Systems in place ensured blood and test results were responded to and delays in treatment avoided or investigated, particularly in relation to pre and undiagnosed diabetes, cancer treatment and sexual health.

We found the provider took steps to promote workforce well-being. Leaders ensured the workforce shared and understood the vision for the service.

There were examples of the practice spearheading outreach work, working in partnership with different local communities and responding to their needs by implementing audits and quality improvement plans which resulted in better reach of patients and or outcomes for homeless and those experiencing particular complications associated with the effects and causes of homelessness.

Leaders demonstrated excellence in identifying and responding to local needs and harnessing national and local opportunities to the benefit of their patients and the community.

There was a culture of checking and auditing how well nurses, allied health care professionals and administration staff performed.

23 June 2015

During a routine inspection

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We inspected Urban Village Medical Practice on the 23 June 2015 as part of our comprehensive inspection programme.

From all the evidence gathered during the inspection process we have rated the practice as outstanding.

Specifically, we found the practice to be outstanding for providing safe, caring, responsive, effective and well led services. They were outstanding for providing services to most of the population groups, specifically those who were vulnerable.

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

  • Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses. Opportunities for learning were maximised.
  • The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice and meet the needs of the most vulnerable of patients, particularly homeless patients.
  • Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment. Information was provided in ways to help patients understand the care available to them.
  • The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the Virtual Patient Participation Group (VPPG).
  • The practice had good facilities and multi-skilled staff and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs. Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand
  • The practice had a clear vision which had equality, quality and safety as its top priority. High standards were promoted and owned by all practice staff with evidence of team working across all roles.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

  • The practice had provided primary care services to homeless people in Manchester for over 15 years, with over 700 homeless patients currently registered with the practice. The practice had developed a wide range of services for patients to improve their health outcomes including access to weekly multidisciplinary drop-in clinics. Additional to these in house primary and secondary care services the practice had also established The Manchester pathway (Mpath) a hospital in-reach service at Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI).
  • The practice ran a campaign during October 'Socktober' in which they encouraged donations of socks that they gave to the homeless who attend the practice.
  • The practice had the largest substance misuse shared care service in place with Manchester drug and alcohol service ‘RISE’ with approximately 200 patients in treatment.
  • The practice had flexibility within their appointment system to ensure all patients requiring on the day emergency appointments were seen.
  • We reviewed the most recent data available for the practice on patient satisfaction. This included information from the national patient survey 2014/15 and the friends and family test. The evidence from all these sources showed patients were very satisfied with how they were treated and that this was with compassion, dignity and respect. For example, data from the national patient survey showed 96% of respondents described their overall experience of this surgery as good and 98% said the last appointment they got was convenient
  • The practice had achieved Gold, the highest award in the NHS ‘Pride in Practice’ award from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Foundation.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice