Archived: The Practice Bowling Green Street

The Practice Bowling Green Street provides primary medical services for a local population of approximately 2,800 patients. The practice serves a predominantly young population and has a high percentage of migrants. The practice is part of a large corporate provider known as The Practice Surgeries.  As part of our inspection we visited, The Practice Bowling Green Street located at 29-31 Bowling Green Street, Leicestershire,LE1 6AS. The practice had no branch surgeries. The staffing establishment consisted of two salaried GP’s, a practice nurse, four administrative staff and a practice manager.

We spoke with ten patients including three members of the patient participation group (PPG). PPG’s are a way in which patients and GP practices can work together to improve the quality of the service. We spoke with clinical, administrative staff and the practice manager. We also reviewed a range of information we hold about the service and asked other organisations to share what they knew about the service.

Systems were in place to ensure patients were safe, this included effective safeguarding policies and procedures that were fully understood and acted on by staff.

Audits were effective in changing clinical practice to improve the quality of service and achieve positive outcomes for patients. The PPG had identified areas for improvements that had been escalated to the practice; the response from the practice had not been effective as the issues had not been fully addressed.

Patients were happy with the service that they received. Patients described a caring service where staff would always ask how they felt, and took time to explain their treatment and options.

Aspects of the service were responsive to patients’ needs. There was an open culture within the practice and staff felt they were able to raise and discuss any issues with the practice manager. There was a proactive PPG that identified and responded to the needs of patients who used the service.

The day to day management of the practice was well led by the practice manager. The overall quality and governance arrangements were led at a corporate level and there was evidence that the provider had robust systems in place for assessing and managing risks. There were arrangements in place for the provider to disseminate important information to staff so that learning could be applied in practice such as clinical lead meetings and newsletters. However, the arrangements for staff to learn and improve as result of incidents and complaints were less obvious at practice level. We were unable to see evidence of how learning from these incidents were shared with all of the staff to reduce the risk of reoccurrence. There were two GP’s working at the practice but only one GP worked full time and was the lead GP. The lead GP’s role and responsibility with regards to clinical leadership was not established as this was undertaken at a corporate level.

Please note that when referring to information throughout this report, for example any reference to the Quality and Outcomes Framework data, this relates to the most recent information available to the CQC at that time.