Archived: Dr Abdul Rauf Kukaswadia Also known as Moss Way Surgery

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Dr Abdula Rauf Kukaswadia’s practice on 7 January 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good. It is rated as outstanding for providing responsive services and good for providing effective and caring services but requires improvement for providing safe services.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

• The practice was run by one GP. Patients said they found it easy to make an appointment with urgent appointments available the same day.
• The practice was clean and had good facilities including disabled access and translation services.
• There were systems in place to mitigate safety risks including analysing significant events and safeguarding.
• Essential health and safety risk assessments for premises and emergency equipment had not been completed for staff and patient welfare.

• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered in line with current legislation.

• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• Information about services and how to complain was available. The practice sought patient views about improvements that could be made to the service, including having a patient participation group (PPG) and acted on feedback.

• Staff worked well together as a team and all felt supported to carry out their roles.

The practice is rated as outstanding for providing responsive services because:

• Despite one GP operating the practice, there were a variety of appointments available to suit all patients’ needs including an open access clinic every morning, telephone consultations, pre-bookable appointments and extended hours. Care home managers and patients told us the GP visited care homes after contractual hours and contacted patients on Saturdays if necessary to discuss test results. Results from the GP national patient survey indicated satisfaction rates with making appointments was 20% higher than local and national averages.

• The practice had a high number of patients in care homes (215). Care home managers told us that whenever there was change to a patient’s medication or dosage, the GP visited the care home and amended the medication administration sheets and showed the responsible person for administering medication the change to prevent any prescribing errors.

• We observed the practice staff worked efficiently together and with other local services to respond to individual patient needs including arrangements for referrals and appointments to explain treatments with the practice nurse.

• There was very high patient satisfaction with the service provided and there had been no written complaints received by the practice in the past 12 months.

However, the areas where the provider must make improvements are:

• The provider must ensure that documented health and safety risk assessments and checks are carried out in order to make sure staff and patients are kept safe and not at risk of harm.

The provider should:-

• Include contact details of where patients can escalate their complaint to, if they are not satisfied with the outcome of a complaint investigated by the practice within their complaints policy.

• Formalise business contingency plans.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice