We carried out an announced inspection of the service on the 15th May 2014. We found that the service was caring, effective, responsive and well-led. There were some improvements required to be safe.
We found that many of the GPs and nurses at the practice had not yet attended the necessary child protection training. Therefore some members of staff may not have been appropriately identifying and responding to the signs of abuse. We also found that criminal record bureau (CRB) checks had not been undertaken for non-clinical staff. There may have been a risk to patients because the provider had not ensured that all staff were suitable to carry out their roles. The provider has been given compliance actions to improve this and we will continue to review these at a follow up inspection.
Many patients had made comments about the telephone systems and appointment booking system being poor. Although the practice had taken some actions to improve the systems the complaints still remained high. The provider told us they would review this in more detail and make further improvements. We will continue to review this at our future inspections.
The practice had suitable arrangements in place to report significant events and share learning to prevent further reoccurrences. There was a detailed business continuity plan in place that covered what to do in the event of a serious incident like a fire or flood at the premises that could have an impact on services being available. Clinical staff in the practice met with multi-disciplinary teams to discuss patient’s treatments and care where this was appropriate.
There was a clear management structure in place with lead areas of responsibilities for the partner GP’s. Staff felt encouraged and supported by the management team and they knew where to go if they needed to report any issues. The management team had a clear business strategy planned for 2014/15. Part of the plans was to improve the telephone and appointment systems and refurbish the waiting room.
There was a lead governance person who was employed full time and was responsible for producing regular reports to the partners about how services were performing against any benchmarks. We saw audits were carried out to ensure safety and quality of care.
The practice provided spacious rooms, wheelchair access and hand rails along the corridors for patient with mobility problems. There were translation services for patients that did not speak English. We were told that the practice had staff members that could speak Urdu, Hindi, Polish, German and Italian. The practices’ website provided information in over 60 international languages to help people understand the healthcare services provided.