Archived: Fryent Medical Centre

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

Fryent Medical Centre provides primary medical services to around 2,100 patients in the Kingsbury area of Brent in North West London. It is run by Willow Tree Family Doctors which also operates a larger practice nearby.

We visited the practice on 23 October 2014 and carried out a comprehensive inspection of the services provided.

We found the practice to be good for providing effective, caring, responsive and well-led services. It was also good for providing services to the six population groups we looked at: older people; people with long-term conditions; families, children and young people; working age people (including those recently retired and students); and people experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia); and people whose circumstances may make them vulnerable.

We found the practice requires Improvement for providing safe services.

Our key findings were as follows:

• The practice worked in collaboration with other health and social care professionals to support patients’ needs and provided a multidisciplinary approach to their care and treatment.
• The practice promoted good health and prevention and provided patients with suitable advice and guidance.
• The practice provided a caring service. Patients indicated that staff were caring and treated them with dignity and respect. Patients were involved in decisions about their care.
• The practice provided appropriate support for end of life care and patients and their carers received good emotional support.
• The practice understood the needs of its patients and was responsive to these. It recognised the needs of different groups in the planning of its services.
• The practice learned from patient experiences, concerns and complaints to improve the quality of care.

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

Importantly, the provider must:

• Arrange a programme of regular infection control audit of the practice, and ensure all staff have received up to date infection control training in line with national guidance. In addition, the practice should carry out and document an assessment of the risk of Legionella in line with national guidance.
• Complete a health and safety and fire risk assessment of the building and environment to help ensure patients, staff and visitors are sufficiently protected from the risks associated with unsafe or unsuitable premises.

In addition the provider should:

• Arrange for all staff to complete formal training in safeguarding of vulnerable adults.
• Complete a documented risk assessment stating the rationale for the decision not to carry out a criminal records check for non-clinical staff.
• Communicate the practice’s chaperone policy more clearly to patients.
• Arrange for non-clinical staff who occasionally act as chaperones to undergo a criminal records check.
• Ensure the monthly check of medicine expiry dates is recorded.
• Ensure regular checks carried out on medical emergencies equipment are recorded. In addition, staff trained to deal with medical emergencies should receive update training to fully meet UK Resuscitation Council guidelines.
• Record weekly fire alarm system checks and implement a planned schedule of fire evacuation drills.
• Ensure following clinical audits the practice reviews whether care has improved by repeating clinical audits and thereby completing the full audit cycle.

• Document regular clinical governance meetings and administrative staff meetings to help track agreed actions and review progress at subsequent meetings. Record in the minutes evidence of the communication throughout the year of lessons learned from complaints.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice