14 July 2016
During a routine inspection
Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Microfaculty on 14 July 2016. Overall the practice is rated as Outstanding.
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. All opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were maximised.
- The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice. For example, they were commended and interviewed by Diabetes UK in March 2016 regarding identifying best practice that could be transferred across peers in the Waltham Forest CCG.
- Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had been trained to provide them with the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.
- Feedback from patients about their care was consistently positive.
- 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 patient participation group.
- The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
- The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. The strategy to deliver this vision had been produced with stakeholders and was regularly reviewed and discussed with staff.
- The practice had strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements.
- High standards were promoted and owned by all practice staff and teams worked together across all roles.
We saw areas of outstanding practice:
- The lead GP had created templates on the patient records system that prompted staff to get specific information, provided guidance as to what actions to take and gave specific agencies contact information in relation to concerns such as violence against women (domestic and sexual), forced marriage and honour based violence, faith based abuse, female genital mutilation, prostitution and trafficking which had been promoted by the CCG.
- The practice took part in research projects such as East London Genes and Health. This entailed the practice collecting anonymised genetic material from people of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin with a view to trying to rewrite the Cardiovascular Risk Tables for South Asians. Information submitted was with the full consent of patients. One hundred and eighteen participants have been recruited.
However, there were also areas of practice where the provider should make improvements:
- The practice should ensure that infection control audits are carried out annually.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice