Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Dr A Wood and Partners, more commonly known as Amersham Health Centre on 7 June 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.
Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:
- Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses. All opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were maximised.
- The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the patient participation group. For example, the practice had revised their extended hours following patient feedback.
- Amersham Health Centre had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
- Feedback from external stakeholders, notably the local care homes which Amersham Health Centre provided the GP service for was positive.
- Written feedback from patients said they found it easy to make an appointment. Patient satisfaction for the ‘express nurse clinics’ was highly positive.
- The practice actively reviewed complaints and how they are managed and responded to, and made improvements as a result.
- The practice used innovative and proactive methods to improve patient outcomes, working with other local providers to share best practice. For example, one of the GPs had led a falls prevention pilot. The aim of this pilot project was to utilise existing guidance and best practice in order to develop a comprehensive multidisciplinary community based falls prevention service for older people.
- The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. The strategy to deliver this vision had been produced with stakeholders and was regularly reviewed and discussed with staff.
- The practice had clear and visible clinical and managerial leadership and supporting governance arrangements.
We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:
- Amersham Health Centre had reviewed the needs of its local population and was providing a highly responsive service. For example, extended hours for the London commuters within the practice population, enhanced safeguarding training for nurses, a vulnerable patient nurse for patients with complex needs, weekly ward rounds by a designated GP at the local care homes and daily ‘express nurse clinics’.
Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP
Chief Inspector of General Practice