Archived: The Crossroads Surgery

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Crossroads Surgery on 24 March 2015 Overall the practice is rated as requires improvement.

Specifically, we found the practice to require improvement for providing safe, and well led services. It also required improvement for providing services for the following population groups; older people, people with long-term conditions, families, children and young people, working age people (including those recently retired and students), people whose circumstances may make them vulnerable, people experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia). It was good for providing a caring, effective and responsive service.

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

Our key findings were as follows:

• There were systems in place to mitigate safety risks including analysing significant events and safeguarding however they were not consistently applied. The premises were clean and tidy. Systems were in place to ensure medication including vaccines were appropriately stored and in date. The recruitment procedure was not consistently being followed.

• Patients had their needs assessed in line with current guidance and the practice had a holistic approach to patient care. The practice promoted health education to empower patients to live healthier lives.

• Feedback from patients and observations throughout our inspection showed the staff were kind, caring and helpful.

• The practice had systems in place to respond to and act on patient complaints and feedback however these were not consistently applied. There were limited governance systems in place to monitor the safety and the quality of the service provided.

• The staff worked well together as a team.

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

Importantly, the provider must:

• Review the systems for assessing and monitoring the quality and safety of service provision and take steps to ensure risks are managed appropriately. With particular regard to the process for formal clinical and non-clinical meetings to take place and serious events investigation and analysis.

• Ensure recruitment arrangements include all necessary employment checks for all staff.

In addition the provider should:

• Review the system in place for complaints handling and investigation to ensure formal lessons learned and actions taken are clearly identified to practice staff and to the complainant.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice