Archived: Egton Surgery

We carried out an announced inspection at Egton Surgery on 18th and 23rd March 2022.

Overall, the practice is rated as outstanding.

The ratings for the key questions are as follows:
Safe - Good
Effective – Good
Caring – Outstanding
Responsive – Outstanding
Well-led – Outstanding

The practice has not been inspected under their current registration with CQC. However, the service was inspected under a previous registration on 25 May 2018. At the inspection in May 2018 the practice was rated Good overall, good in the key questions of safe, effective, responsive and well-led and outstanding in caring. The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Egton Surgery on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Why we carried out this inspection:

This inspection was a comprehensive inspection of Egton Surgery as a new registration.

How we carried out the inspection:

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing
• Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system and discussing findings with the provider
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider
• Requesting evidence from the provider
• A shorter site visit

Our findings:
We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:
• what we found when we inspected
• information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
• information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

We have rated this practice as outstanding overall

We found that:

• The practice provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm;
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs. The practice routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided;
• Patients were treated with kindness, respect and compassion. The most recent GP patient survey results showed the practice as being above local CCG and national averages in respect of the way patients were treated by staff;
• Feedback received from patients was excellent and described a caring and person-centred service that had been maintained throughout COVID-19. Multiple examples were provided by staff and patients to demonstrate an excellent caring approach to patients;
• The most recent results of the GP patient survey were significantly above local CCG and national averages in respect of access to appointments. Feedback received from patients as part of the inspection process was excellent in terms of access to appointments and that access had been maintained throughout COVID-19;
• The practice had identified areas where there were gaps in provision locally and had taken steps to address them;
• Leadership, governance and culture were used to drive and improve the delivery of high-quality person-centred care;
• The practice demonstrated a clear and committed approach to continuous improvement and innovation by the way they responded to the challenges of COVID-19; particularly in the way that access was managed and partnership working to ensure as little disruption to patient care as possible; and
• There were high levels of satisfaction across all staff.

Whilst we found no breaches of the regulations, the provider should:

• review the systems that are in place so that historical medicines safety alerts are always acted on.
• make sure that the appropriate coding is always added to the patient’s clinical record.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care