Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at the Brimpton House Surgery on 31 March 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.
Specifically, we found the practice requires improvement for providing safe services and good for providing effective, caring, responsive and well-led services. It was also good for providing services for older people, people with long-term conditions, families and young children, working age people, people whose circumstances made them vulnerable and those suffering from poor mental health.
Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:
- Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, reviewed and addressed.
- Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance.
- Staff had received training appropriate to their roles and any further training needs had been identified and planned.
- 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 and easy to understand.
- Patients said they found the appointment system easy to use with urgent appointments available the same day.
- The practice were aware of their performance data and knew where improvements were required and were taking steps to achieve them
However there were areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.
Importantly the provider must;
- Ensure recruitment processes are more robust including a consistent approach to taking references, undertaking disclosure and barring service checks, checking qualifications and the completion of induction programmes for new staff.
Importantly the provider should;
- Ensure governance issues and safety incidents and complaints, discussed at meetings are clearly documented to ensure actions required are not missed and that there are clear lines of accountability for action.
- Establish a written policy for the review of medications including the monitoring of those medications that need regular blood or other tests.
- Undertake a legionella risk assessment and implement risk prevention measures if required.
- Complete an analysis of the patient survey undertaken in November 2014 and produce an action plan and timescales for improvements
- Establish a system to obtain feedback from staff about the services provided at the practice.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice