Tower House Practice

This practice is rated as Good overall. (Previous rating April 2017 – Good)

The key questions at this inspection are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? - Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Tower House Practice on 30 October 2018. This inspection was carried out under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. The inspection was planned to check whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

At this inspection we found:

• The practice had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the practice learned from them and improved processes.
• The practice routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence- based guidelines.
• There was a comprehensive system of meetings for staff at all levels. Governance of all areas of service delivery was embedded into practice.
• There was a clear management structure in place and staff had lead roles in all areas of practice service provision.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients found the appointment system easy to use and reported that they were able to access care when they needed it. The practice took every opportunity to listen to patient views and concerns.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation. The practice participated in the training of new GPs and was a teaching practice for medical students.

We saw an area of outstanding practice:

• The practice was proactive in taking every opportunity to work with patients, staff and external partners to shape and improve patient services. It had begun work with other local practices to standardise best practice across the local area and led on areas of this work. We saw examples of innovation in services such as the in-practice dermatology service which was to be adopted in the community by the clinical commissioning group. The practice also offered a sponsorship scheme for non-EU workers locally, allowing GPs to remain in the country who would otherwise have left.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Improve the protocol for the management of communications coming into the practice and introduce a GP audit of the process.
• Take steps to record action taken in response to patient safety medicines alerts in individual patient health records.
• Introduce a formal annual review of significant incidents in the practice.
• Review registers of those patients excluded from some areas of long-term condition monitoring.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP
Chief Inspector of General Practice

Please refer to the detailed report and the evidence tables for further information.