The Care Quality Commission
  • Doctor
  • GP practice

The New Springwells Practice

Overall: Good read more about inspection ratings

Spring Wells, Billingborough, Sleaford, Lincolnshire, NG34 0QQ (01529) 240234

Provided and run by:
The New Springwells Practice

All Inspections

25 October 2023

During a routine inspection

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The New Springwells Practice on 23 & 25 October 2023. Overall, the practice is rated as good.

Safe - good

Effective - good

Caring - outstanding

Responsive - good

Well-led - good

Following our previous inspection on 25 February 2016, the practice was rated outstanding overall and for caring, responsive and well led and good for safe and effective key questions.

At the last inspection we rated the practice as outstanding overall and for providing caring, effective and well led services because:

  • Of the systems and practices in place to manage significant events, positive incident reporting and learning culture. Patient focused approach to individualised care, liaison with other care providers, understanding of and response to access and demand fluctuations. Patient feedback showed extreme satisfaction with the service provided with staff feedback showing a good working environment and team culture.

At this inspection, we found the provider had maintained outstanding practice in the caring key question, with good practice in safe, effective and well led key questions. The practice overall, is therefore now rated good.

The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for The New Springwells Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out this inspection to follow up from a previous inspection in line with our inspection priorities.

How we carried out the inspection.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site.

This included:

  • Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing.
  • Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system (this was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements).
  • Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider.
  • Requesting evidence from the provider.
  • A site visit.
  • Requesting patient feedback via the providers website.
  • Conducting telephone interviews with other interested parties.
  • Providing feedback forms for all members of staff.

Our findings

We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:

  • what we found when we inspected.
  • information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services.
  • information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

We found that:

  • The practice provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm, if improvements were identified as required, action was taken to mitigate and resolve the risk.
  • Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
  • Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care, people were respected and valued as individuals and were empowered as partners in their care, practically and emotionally, by the service provided.
  • Feedback from people who used the service, those who were close to them, and stakeholders was positive about the way staff treated people. People thought that staff went the extra mile, and their care and support exceeded their expectations.
  • Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way and the rurality of the service and demographic makeup of the patient cohort had been taken into account.
  • The practice worked innovatively with local community services and businesses to support patients who may be vulnerable or have specific needs.
  • Leaders did not demonstrate full understanding of all issues relating to the challenges to quality within the practice and governance arrangements had failed to effectively identify all risks to safe patient care. However, they had responded immediately and made changes required to mitigate the challenges to quality and safe care during our inspection.

Whilst we found no breaches of regulation the provider should:

  • Continue to update information about immunisation and training.
  • Take action to embed and continually improve the newly developed and improved governance system and process within the practice to ensure safe care.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care

18 January 2016

During a routine inspection

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The New Springwells Practice on 18 January 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

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

  • The leadership, governance and culture of this practice are used to drive and improve the delivery of high quality patient centred care.

  • The practice has high levels of staff satisfaction.

  • There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events.

  • 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.
  • Risks to patients were comprehensive and well embedded.

  • Feedback from patients about their care was consistently and strongly positive.

  • The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure that they meet patients’ needs.
  • Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.

  • 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.

  • The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs. Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand.
  • 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.
  • Governance and performance management arrangements are proactively reviewed.

We saw areas of outstanding practice including:-

  • The practice carried out a thorough analysis of significant events. These were reviewed at monthly clinical governance meetings. This ensured that all staff understood what actions had been taken to apply learning from each event.We saw a positive culture in the practice for reporting and learning from medicines incidents and errors. Incidents were logged efficiently and then reviewed promptly.

  • We found that that the practice had made patient needs and preferences central to its systems in place to ensure flexibility, choice and continuity of care. For example, a nurse care co-ordinator looks after vulnerable patients, completes care plans and carries out home visits as required. They also liaise with the neighbourhood team to ensure a multi-disciplinary approach to their care needs.

  • The practice closely monitored patient demand for appointments and as a result were able to respond to this demand in a short space of time. An extra GP appointment session was held from 7am to 8.30am in times of high demand. Reception and dispensary staff also worked these extra sessions to ensure that the patients could get their prescriptions for medicines as required after seeing the GP.

  • Patients we spoke with told us they were extremely satisfied with the care provided by the practice and said their dignity and privacy was respected. They each told us that the practice was excellent and they felt that all the staff went the extra mile to make sure they were well cared for. Quality and Safety was the practice ethos and all staff worked well together.

  • The practice had a vision and strategy in place driven by quality and safety which reflected compassion, dignity and respect. All staff we spoke with felt engaged in this vision and strategy through regular practice meetings and a strong team culture at the practice.

However there were areas of practice where the provider should make improvements:

  • Further embed the practice system for the recording of prescription stationary

  • Continue to look at ways to increase number of learning disability reviews undertaken.

  • Review significant events and complaints to review themes and trends

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice