Hastings House

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out a comprehensive inspection of Hastings House Medical Centre on 14 April 2015. Overall the practice is rated as Good. Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services. It was also good for providing services for the older people, people with long-term conditions, families, children and young people, working age people (including those recently retired and students), people living in vulnerable circumstances, and people experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia).

Our key findings were as follows:

• The practice had comprehensive systems for monitoring and maintaining the safety of the practice and the care and treatment they provided to their patients.
• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses. All opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were maximised.
• The practice was proactive in helping people with long term conditions to manage their health and had arrangements in place to make sure their health was monitored regularly.
• The practice was clean and hygienic and had arrangements for reducing the risks from healthcare associated infections.
• The practice had a well-established and well trained team who had expertise and experience in a wide range of health conditions.
• Patients felt that they were treated with dignity and respect. They felt that their GP listened to them and treated them as individuals.
• The practice was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs. Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

Hastings House Medical Centre provides primary medical services for a local population of approximately 10,500 patients in the local area. A branch surgery is also provided at Little Thatch in Kineton. As part of our inspection we visited Hastings House. We spoke with seventeen patients including two members of the virtual patient group, clinical and administrative staff.  This included four GPs and both the business and practice managers.

All the patients that we spoke with during our inspection were very complimentary about the service they received. The service performed well against quality outcomes relating to patient care. Patients described a caring service in which they were treated with dignity and respect, they felt listened to and received a good continuation of care from practice.

The practice was responsive to the needs of patients. Patients with urgent needs were able to access the surgery when they needed to and arrangements were in place to ensure those with chronic or complex health needs were prioritised. Referrals to other health care providers had been made in a timely way.

We found an open and supportive culture at the practice. Staff had opportunities for personal development and felt able to raise issues or concerns with senior staff.  Patients felt listened to and comments raised were acted upon. The practice had identified risks and developed a business plan to address an expected increase in demand for the service due to to a new housing development in the locality.

We were concerned about the lack of robust governance arrangements at the practice to ensure information and learning from incidents and complaints was disseminated among all staff as appropriate and in a consistent way. Formal opportunities for staff to discuss issues relating to their role were not clearly defined. Some of the policies and procedures required review so they reflected current practice and local arrangements for staff to follow. We found recruitment processes were not robust and monitoring arrangements were not always effective in identifying issues relating to safe care. We have therefore identified this as an area for improvement.

Services were available to all population groups with the main strength being the consistency of care provided to patients from the same GP.