Archived: Stockett Lane Surgery

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Stockett Lane Surgery (Greensand Health Centre) on 5 October 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system for reporting and recording significant events.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had been trained to provide them with the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.
• The practice worked with the local council to deliver health improvement services for patients. Initiatives included health promotion coffee mornings and staff led health walks.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns.
• Patients said they sometimes found it difficult to make an appointment with a named GP although there were urgent appointments available the same day.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour.
• The practice had policies and procedures which governed staff recruitment. However, these had not ensured that appropriate references were received prior to staff commencing in post. For example, two newly appointed staff members had not had a reference returned from their most recent employer.
• Results from the national GP patient survey showed that patients scored the practice lower than average in some areas of GP consultations. However, patients we spoke with told us they were happy with their consultations.
• The practice scored lower than average in patient’s satisfaction with opening hours and being able to get through to the practice by phone. The practice had recently changed the telephone system to improve this and to provide data to help them identify the issues and address them.

We saw two area of outstanding practice:

• The practice had developed their smoking cessation service. They had identified that 52% of patients who had attended hospital through the accident and emergency (A&E) department were smokers. As a result, the project was designed to increase the number of smokers on the programme with an overall aim of improving their health and reducing admissions to A&E. Since starting the project the practice had increased the number of patients stopping smoking from 4 to 20.

• The practice had looked at improving services for young people and had introduced a mobile friendly website and a ‘fast pass’ system for children who were unwell and where parents may need to contact the practice quickly. The ‘fast pass’ was a direct dial telephone number that meant they could bypass the usual phone line. The practice had won a local ‘pacesetter’ award for this service where the practice was awarded for the service and for sharing best practice with other services. The ‘fast pass’ system had been extended to all patients where they were unwell, either acutely or over the long term so they could contact the practice more easily.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• Continue to improve recruitment processes in order to help ensure that where references requested are not received, these are followed up .

• Continue to monitor patient satisfaction with regards to access to the practice, including telephone access and making appointments Monitor and review patient satisfaction with GP consultations with a view to making improvements.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice