We carried out a review of the data available to us about Dr Hutchings and Partners on 6 July 2023. We have not found evidence that we need to carry out an inspection or reassess our rating at this stage.
This could change at any time if we receive new information. We will continue to monitor data about this service.
If you have concerns about Dr Hutchings and Partners, you can give feedback on this service.
We carried out a comprehensive inspection of Dr Hutchings and Partners on 27 April 2016. The practice was rated as requires improvement for providing safe care and well led services and good for being effective, caring and responsive. The practice was rated as requires improvement overall. This was because we found that there was not always clear documentation of significant events or of the meetings where these were discussed; the practice’s significant events policy was not followed and not all staff attended the meetings. The practice did not carry out annual reviews of significant events to identify trends. In addition, there was not always adequate monitoring and mitigation of risks relating to fire, gas and electrical appliance safety. It was also found that the monitoring of training was weak, and not all staff had completed up to date training relevant to their roles, such as safeguarding children and adults, health and safety and infection control.
Following the inspection we asked the provider to send a report of the changes they would make to comply with the regulations they were not meeting at that time in relation to significant events, premises safety and staff training.
In addition to the regulation breach, during the inspection in April 2016, we made recommendations of best practice to address some minor areas of concern. Whilst the practice was rated as good for providing effective and responsive services, we recommended that the practice reviewed its decision making process for exception reporting of some patients with long-term conditions. (Exception reporting is the removal of patients from Quality and Outcomes Framework calculations where, for example, the patients are unable to attend a review meeting or certain medicines cannot be prescribed because of side effects). We also recommended that they took steps to enable patients with disabilities, hearing difficulties and those whose first language is not English, to access the surgery services more easily.
We carried out a desktop inspection of Dr Hutchings and Partners in December 2016 to assess whether the practice had made the recommended improvements. We found the practice was able to demonstrate that they were meeting the standards for safe care and well led services. In particular;
There were systems in place to ensure that learning from significant events was clearly documented and disseminated throughout the practice to all relevant staff.
Risks relating to fire, gas and portable electrical appliance safety had been assessed and mitigated.
All team members were up to date on statutory training to ensure the safety and wellbeing of patients and staff.
The practice was also able to demonstrate they were working towards improving their exception reporting figures through increased communication with their patients. They had initiated a text reminder service in November 2016 to call patients in for annual review and commenced a personalised telephone reminder service for some patient groups. These systems were reported to be working well, although the initiatives had occurred too recently to offer any comparable data. They had also reviewed the patient equality and accessibility issues and had undertaken repair work to the automatic entrance doors to make access easier for less able bodied patients. They had access to a telephone based interpretation service and all staff were aware how to access it for their patients. Although a hearing loop was not yet available, the GP partners had agreed it was necessary and the practice manager was looking at availability and pricing.
We have updated our ratings to reflect these changes. This report should be read in conjunction with the full inspection report.
Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Dr Hutchings and Partners (Rosemead Surgery) on 27 April 2016. Overall the practice is rated as requires improvement.
Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:
The areas where the provider must make improvements are:
Ensure that all staff training is up to date.
The areas where the provider should make improvements are:
Chief Inspector of General Practice