Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out a comprehensive inspection of the Churchill Medical Practice on 10 November 2014. Overall the practice is rated as good.
Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing effective, caring, responsive and well led services. The service was rated as requires improvement for providing a safe service. It was also good for providing services to older people, those with long term conditions, families, children and young people, working age people (including those recently retired and students), people whose circumstances make them vulnerable and those people experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia).
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, appropriately reviewed and addressed.
- Risks to patients were assessed and well managed, with the exception of those relating to recruitment checks.
- Clinical audit cycles had been carried out, and we saw evidence that audits were driving improvement in performance to improve patient outcomes.
- 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.
- Urgent appointments were usually available on the day they were requested. However patients said that they sometimes had to wait a long time for non-urgent appointments.
- The practice had a number of policies and procedures to govern activity.
The areas where the provider must make improvements are:
- Undertake an audit to address any issues with cleaning. Ensure cleaning schedules are produced and available for inspection within the practice;
In addition the provider should:
- Ensure all significant event forms are fully completed and actions from significant event meetings are fully documented.
- Produce a centralised practice training log.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice