Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Sorsby Medical Practice on 19 February 2015. Overall the practice is rated as Good. The practice is run by the Lower Clapton Group Practice nearby, which is separately registered with the Care Quality Commission and was not visited as part of this inspection.
Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services. It was also good for providing services to the six population groups we looked at: older people; people with long-term conditions; families, children and young people; working age people (including those recently retired and students); people whose circumstances may make them vulnerable; and people experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia).
We found the practice requires Improvement for providing safe services.
Our key findings were as follows:
- The practice worked in collaboration with other health and social care professionals to support patients’ needs and provided a multidisciplinary approach to their care and treatment.
- The practice promoted good health and prevention and provided patients with suitable advice and guidance.
- The practice had several ways of identifying patients who needed additional support, and was pro-active in offering this.
- The practice provided a caring service. Patients indicated that staff were caring and treated them with dignity and respect. Patients were involved in decisions about their care.
- The practice provided appropriate support for end of life care and patients and their carers received good emotional support.
- The practice learned from patient experiences, concerns and complaints to improve the quality of care.
However, there were also areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.
Importantly, the provider must:
- Ensure patients are fully protected against the risks associated with the recruitment of staff, in particular in the recording of recruitment information and in ensuring all appropriate pre-employment checks are carried out and recorded prior to a staff member taking up post.
In addition the provider should:
- Ensure the records of child protection training are available for all staff.
- Arrange for all staff to complete formal training in safeguarding of vulnerable adults.
- Take steps to communicate the practice’s chaperone policy more clearly to patients in clinical areas.
- Ensure the recommendations of the recent PHE report on cold storage of medicines are implemented and the policy for ensuring medicines are kept at the required temperatures is followed at all times.
- Arrange infection control update training for all staff who need this and ensure records are available for staff who have completed the training.
- Implement a planned schedule of fire evacuation drills and arrange fire safety update training for all staff.
- Review the practice’s consent protocol to ensure mental capacity is appropriately taken into account.
- Continue to pursue action to make further improvements in disabled access to the practice.
- Take further steps to address dissatisfaction raised by patients about continuity of care, access to appointments and waiting times.
- Arrange for information about the complaints procedure to be made more readily available to patients in the waiting area; and review the procedure document to ensure references to other agencies is up to date and accurate.
- Ensure the practice’s whistleblowing policy is up to date and staff are made aware of it.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice