Archived: Fulford Surgery Also known as Priory Medical Group

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Fulford Surgery on 03 December 2014. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, effective, caring, responsive and for being well led. It was also outstanding for providing services for the older people and families, children and younger people.

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 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).

• The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. A business plan was in place, was monitored and regularly reviewed and discussed with all staff. High standards were promoted and owned by all practice staff with evidence of team working across all roles.

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 an effective 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).

We saw one area of outstanding practice:

The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice. For example a ‘people care focus group’ was established. This group was responsible for providing direct care in the community and for patients that found it difficult to attend the practice location.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice