The Care Quality Commission has found the quality of care provided by Caythorpe and Ancaster Medical Practice, in Ancaster, Lincolnshire, to be Outstanding following an inspection in April.
Inspectors found the practice was providing a safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led service that meets the needs of the population it serves.
A full report of the inspection has now been published.
Under CQC’s new programme of inspections, all England’s GP practices are being given a rating according to whether they are safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led.
The report on Caythorpe and Ancaster Medical Practice highlights a number of areas of outstanding practice, including:
- The practice ensured that the patients were protected by a strong comprehensive safety system with a focus on openness, transparency and learning when things went wrong. The level and quality of incident reporting demonstrated that all staff were open and fully committed to reporting incidents and near misses.
- A GP partner, with the support of Lincolnshire County Council, introduced a “Bicycles for exercise programme” The practice purchased 13 electric bicycles and these were loaned to identified “at-risk” patients, for example, those with cardiovascular disease, to encourage them to become more physically active. The practice used their medicine delivery service to deliver these to patients. The feedback from this project was very favourable and encouraged patients to go on to continue to cycle and become physically fitter.
- A GP partner, with support from local agencies, had helped to develop local walking groups.These were initially surgery based but had now become autonomous and self-sustaining under the “Walk for Life” scheme. They now had active weekly walking groups based in both Caythorpe and Ancaster surgeries. Independent research by Sheffield Hallam University (The value of walking – an ethnographic study of a Walking for Health group, Gordon Grant April 2015) had validated the success of this programme.
Janet Williamson, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice and Dentistry in CQC’s Central region said:
“It is clear Caythorpe and Ancaster Medical Practice is providing an effective, responsive and well led service which is a real asset to the people living in this part of Lincolnshire.
“Services were tailored to meet the needs of the patients and were delivered in a way to ensure flexibility, choice and continuity of care.
“Feedback from people who use the service and stakeholders was consistently and strongly positive. 93 patients expressed high levels of satisfaction about all aspects of the care and treatment they received. The feedback from comments cards we reviewed said they are treated with care, compassion, dignity and respect.
“All of this hard work pays off in making a real difference to patients – which is why we have found this practice to be Outstanding.”
Ends
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Find out more
Read our reports about Caythorpe and Ancaster Medical Practice.
Services were tailored to meet the needs of the patients and were delivered in a way to ensure flexibility, choice and continuity of care.
Janet Williamson, Deputy Chief Inspector of General Practice and Dentistry, Central region