Archived: Dr Mills and Partners

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced inspection at Dr Mills & Partners on 17 February 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, caring, responsive and effective services and outstanding for being well led. It was also good for providing services for older people, people with long term conditions, families, children and young people, people whose circumstances make them vulnerable and people experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia).

Our key findings across all the population group 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 used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice.

• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment. Information was provided to help patients understand the care available to them.

• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the Patient Participation Group (PPG).

• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs. Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand.

• 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.

• The practice developed additional enhanced services and through joint working achieved Investors in People and the Quality Practice Award.

We saw areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice employed a person who worked with alcohol dependent patients and the success of this work was evident in patients’ reduced dependency on alcohol and the proportion of patients with alcohol problems also reducing.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice