Archived: Park Road Medical Practice

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Park Road Medical Practice on 19 May 2016. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding.

Our key findings were as follows:

• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance.
• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses.
• 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.
• Patients said they were able to get an appointment with a GP when they needed one, with urgent appointments available the same day.
• The practice was integrated in the local community; managers were aware of the housing problems faced by some people and provided appropriate support.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• There was a clear leadership structure in place and staff felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which they acted on.
• Staff worked well together as a team and there were processes in place to manage staff training effectively.

We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:

• Following a suggestion made by the practice’s patient participation group, the practice developed and implemented a ‘discharge and handover’ policy. Every patient who had been discharged from hospital was contacted to ask how they were and if they needed any support or help with medication.
• There was a system in place to invite patients in for a teenage health check once they reached their 16th birthday; in the past year 21 patients had taken up the offer. A practice leaflet had been produced for patients between the ages of 13 and 19; this provided contact details and pictures of all of the GPs and information about the dedicated young people’s services offered by the practice. The practice had carried out a survey of eight young people to ascertain whether they found the leaflet relevant and easy to understand, all patients responded and all reported the leaflet was useful.
• A ‘new baby pack’ had been developed by the practice; this was sent out to all new parents and provided information about baby clinics and how to seek medical advice for young families. Each day, a number of ‘sick children’ appointments were embargoed for booking babies or young children with a GP. Many of these appointments were held until mid-afternoon when children had finished school for the day.

The area where the provider should make improvements is:

• Take steps to ensure the infection control action plan is completed; with regard to replacing the carpet in one of the nurse’s clinical rooms with appropriate flooring.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP 

Chief Inspector of General Practice