Bingley Medical Practice

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Bingley Medical Practice on 12 January 2016. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events. Staff understood their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses.
• Risks to patients were assessed and safely managed.
• 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.
• 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 could book urgent appointments when they needed to and these were available the same day.
• The practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management. The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on. We found positive working relationships between the staff.

• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the Duty of Candour.

• The practice offered a district wide immediate access service providing advice and support to people with mental health problems.

• A&E attendances were significantly lower than the national average with prevalence at 69% of the national average (2885 attendances in 2014 from a practice population of more than 12500) the third best performing practice in the CCG.

We saw areas of outstanding practice:

• The practice provided a ‘temporary’ practice manager to ‘Bevan Healthcare’ which provides services for homeless people, people in temporary or unstable accommodation, refugees or those seeking asylum and others who find it hard to access the health care and support they need. The practice works closely with other organisations and with the local community in ensuring bespoke services are provided to meet patients’ needs.

• The practice had obtained the Leeds Clinical Teaching Excellence Award in 2012, only one other primary care organisation had achieved this ward. The award took into consideration that Imperial College of London medical students chose this practice for out of London placements. The practice offered medical student training for Year 1, 2, 5 and extended research students from the Leeds Medical School. The practice regularly had three GP registrars on placement and three of the partners were qualified trainers. Nurse mentoring was provided for nurses in training and qualified nurses. All the nurses were qualified nurse mentors for training. The practice offered work experience for A level students who hoped to study Medicine as a career.

• The practice had obtained the Quality Practice Award in 2011 via the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). This involved an onsite visit which took place during a normal working day to assess the practice and interviews with members of staff.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• Develop a more effective audit of the named GP prescription pads in order to make them more secure.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice