Favell Plus Surgery

Updated 13 April 2018

Favell Plus Surgery provides a range of primary medical services from a multi-occupancy shared premises at Weston Favell Primary Care Centre, Billing Brook Road, Northampton, NN3 8DW. The practice has two registered managers in place. (A registered manager is an individual registered with CQC to manage the regulated activities provided).

The practice serves a population of approximately 8,918. National data indicates the area served is more deprived compared to England as a whole. The practice population is mostly white British with Central and Eastern European and Black and minority ethnic (mainly African) communities. The practice serves an above average population of those aged from 0 to 19 years and 30 to 39 years. There is a lower than average population of those aged 45 years and over.

The clinical team includes two male GP partners, two salaried GPs (one male and one female), a nurse practitioner who is qualified to prescribe certain medicines and two practice nurses. The team is supported by two practice managers and nine secretarial, administration and reception staff. The practice provides services under a General Medical Services (GMS) contract (a nationally agreed contract with NHS England).

At Favell Plus Surgery the doors open from 7.30am and the phone lines open from 8am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday. There is no lunchtime closure at the practice. GP appointments are available from 7.30am to 11.30am and 12.30pm to 5.30pm daily, with slight variations depending on the doctor and the nature of the appointment.

An out of hours service for when the practice is closed is provided by Northamptonshire Out of Hours. 

Updated 13 April 2018

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Favell Plus Surgery on 22 June 2017. The overall rating for the practice was requires improvement. The full comprehensive report on the June 2017 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Favell Plus Surgery on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

This inspection was an announced focused inspection carried out on 22 March 2018 to confirm that the practice had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breaches of regulation that we identified in our previous inspection on 22 June 2017. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.

On this focused inspection we found that the practice had made improvements since our previous inspection and were now meeting the regulation that had previously been breached.

The practice is now rated as good for providing safe and well-led services. As this applies to everyone using the practice, the population group ratings have been updated to reflect this. Overall the practice is now rated as good.

Our key finding was as follows:

• The practice had effective governance arrangements in place to ensure patient safety alerts were managed appropriately and staff took action to keep patients safe.

Additionally where we previously told the practice they should make improvements our key findings were as follows:

• A fire drill had been completed and documented.
• There was evidence the practice involved patients and was developing engagement with its Patient Participation Group (PPG). (The PPG is a community of patients who work with the practice to discuss and develop the services provided).
• The practice discussed their below average satisfaction scores from the National GP Patient Surveys published in January and July 2017. They demonstrated they had taken action to respond to these in an attempt to improve future results. We saw their focus had been on improving patients’ overall experience of the practice. This included employing three new reception staff in July 2017, increasing the overall availability of the team by 40 hours each week. An additional telephone line was installed to increase the call handling capacity of the reception team, especially at peak times. The recruitment of a new GP in December 2017 had provided an additional 24 pre-bookable appointments each week and increased the availability of same day appointments. The nursing team rotas had been reviewed and altered to increase the availability of late afternoon appointments to better meet the needs of working age patients. One of the practice nurses was now working an additional seven hours each week to assist with this.
• Following our inspection in June 2017 a practice nurse had been appointed as the practice’s carers’ lead (or champion) responsible for providing useful and relevant information to those patients. The relevant staff we spoke with told us their priority since our last inspection had been to ensure the practice’s carers register (those patients on the practice list identified as carers) was correct and accurately reflected those patients who were active in a carer role. We saw a piece of work had been completed to achieve that. Staff told us the focus moving forward was to identify more carers in the practice’s patient population. At the time of this focused inspection on 22 March 2018 the practice had identified 61 patients on the practice list as carers. This was approximately 0.7% of the practice’s patient list. Of those, 40 (66%) had been invited for and 24 had accepted and received a health review since 1 April 2017. Twelve of those patients were referred to Northamptonshire Carers (a local support organisation). A dedicated carers’ notice board was prominently displayed in the patient waiting area and provided considerable information and advice including signposting carers to support services. A notice in the practice and on their website invited patients who identified as carers to make themselves known to the practice to ensure they received the appropriate support.
• We found the practice now had an effective system in place for handling verbal complaints. We looked at the details of four verbal complaints received between September 2017 and January 2018 and saw that as with written complaints, they were recorded, investigated and dealt with in a timely way with openness and transparency. Where appropriate, action was taken as a result to improve the quality of care or patient experience. All of the staff we spoke with understood the process to follow if a patient wished to raise a verbal complaint.
• All of the nursing staff had received an appraisal completed by one of the GP partners since September 2017. We saw that training needs assessments formed part of the appraisals. The nurses we spoke with said they were encouraged and given opportunities to develop and the practice provided the appropriate training to meet their needs. For example, both of the practice nurses had passed their initial assessments to complete an independent nurse prescriber course funded by the practice which they were due to attend in September 2018 and March 2019 respectively. Protected learning time would be available for them to do this. They told us the GP partners or nurse practitioner (depending on their role) were proactive in providing them with ongoing support and supervision during clinical sessions.

There was an area of practice where the provider needs to continue to make improvements.

Importantly, the provider should:

• Continue to identify and support carers in its patient population.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice

Updated 13 April 2018

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Updated 13 April 2018