Archived: Heworth Green Surgery Also known as Priory Medical Group

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

This is the report of findings from our inspection of Heworth Green surgery which is part of the Priory Medical Group. The practice is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide primary care services.

We undertook a planned, comprehensive inspection of Heworth Green surgery on 8 December 2014. There are nine surgeries in the Priory Medical Group (PMG) across the York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) area.

The practice is rated as Good. A safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led service is

provided that meets the needs of the population it serves.

Our key findings were as follows:

• The practice provided services to the local community, that had been designed to meet the needs of the local population. Patients registered with this practice are able to access all services at the other nine practices in the Priory Medical Group (PMG).

• Feedback from patients was positive, they told us staff communicated effectively and treated them with respect and kindness. Most patients told us they were able to access timely appointments in the practice. However we received some comments about the difficulty accessing appointments via the current telephone system.

Staff reported feeling supported and able to voice any concerns or make suggestions for improvement.

We saw several areas of good practice including:

• A patient centred approach to delivering care and treatment. All staff were aware of and sympathetic to, the particular difficulties faced by the local population. The practice was proactive in improving health and access to services. We saw that the practice was engaged with other health and social care agencies to improve access and patients health.

• The practice had a good governance system in place, was well organised and actively sought to learn from performance data, complaints, incidents and feedback.

• The practice actively sought the opinions of staff and patients, working with a well-established patient participation group (PPG).

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice