Archived: The Chapel Street Surgery

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of The Chapel Street Surgery on 4 February 2015. We visited the practice location at Chapel Street, Newhaven, East Sussex, BN9 9PW.

Overall the practice is rated as requires improvement. Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing caring and responsive services. It required improvement for providing safe, effective and well led services. It also required improvement for providing services for older people, people with long-term conditions, families, children and young people, working age people (including those recently retired and students), people whose circumstances may make them vulnerable and people experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia).

The inspection team spoke with staff and patients and reviewed policies and procedures. The practice understood the needs of the local population and engaged effectively with other services. The practice was committed to providing high quality patient care and patients told us they felt the practice was caring and responsive to their needs.

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

• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance.
• The practice understood the needs of the local population and planned services to meet those needs.
• The practice worked closely with external agencies and community services to meet the needs of patients and ensure continuity of care.
• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses.
• Risks to patients and staff were not always assessed and well managed.
• Staff had generally received training appropriate to their roles and any further training needs had been identified and planned. However, some staff had not received training in the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults.
• 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.

However, there were also areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.

Importantly, the provider must:

• Ensure that all staff are trained in safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults.
• Ensure all staff are supported by means of receiving appraisals.
• Ensure a programme of audit of infection control processes is in place in order to ensure that policies and processes are effectively implemented.
• Ensure risk assessment and monitoring processes effectively identify, assess and manage risks relating to the health, safety and welfare of patients and staff.

In addition the provider should:

• Establish a process to ensure more formal sharing of information and learning from incidents for all staff.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice