York Road Group Practice

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at York Road Group Practice on 6th October 2015.

Overall the practice is rated as good.

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. Staff were aware of procedures for safeguarding patients from risk of abuse.
• There were appropriate systems in place to reduce risks to patient safety, for example, infection control procedures and the management of medication. However, the records of some environmental safety checks and the recruitment records needed improvement.
• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. Staff had received training appropriate to their roles.

• Patients were overall positive about the care they received from the practice. They commented that they were treated with respect and dignity and that staff were caring, supportive and helpful.

• Services were planned and delivered to take into account the needs of different patient groups.

• Feedback from patients indicated they considered improvements were needed to availability of appointments, length of time waiting to be seen and access to the practice by phone. The practice had made changes to the service to improve access and planned on making further changes.

• The practice sought patient views about improvements that could be made to the service and acted on patient feedback. Information about how to complain was available.

• There were systems in place to monitor and improve quality and identify risk.

There were areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements:

The provider should:

Introduce a formal system to review significant events to ensure the identified action has been undertaken and that it has been effective.

Ensure that a system is in place to check the on-going registration of GPs with the General Medical Council and the National Performers List.

Ensure that a record of all checks undertaken in relation to staff recruitment are held at the practice.

Ensure that appropriate checks of the water systems are undertaken and that the emergency lighting is regularly serviced and records are held to demonstrate this.

Ensure that actions taken following the investigation of complaints are fully documented to demonstrate that appropriate measures have been taken.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice