Archived: North End Medical Centre

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at North End Medical Centre on 5 April 2016. Overall the practice is rated as Good.

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

• 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.

• Feedback from patients about their care was consistently 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.

• 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.

• The practice actively reviewed complaints and how they are managed and responded to, and made improvements as a result.

• 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.

• The practice had strong and visible clinical and managerial leadership and governance arrangements.

We saw some areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice also took part in a programme of Community Health workshops on diabetes, in partnership with a local voluntary agency. We saw these workshops included cooking demonstrations, sample recipes, medical and practical advice and a free diabetic-friendly lunch was also served. The workshops were delivered on a monthly basis and attendance ranged from 50 – 100 at each workshop. Performance for diabetes related indicators was 100% which was 17% above the CCG and 11% above the national average.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• The practice should review, with an aim to reducing their level of exception reporting in relation to Quality Outcome Framework (QOF).

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice