Archived: Earsdon Park Medical Practice

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Earsdon Park Medical Practice on 10 March 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, well-led, effective, caring and responsive services. It was also good for providing services for the following population groups: Older people; People with long-term conditions; Families, children and young people; Working age people (including those recently retired and students); People whose circumstances may make them vulnerable; People experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia).

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

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, appropriately reviewed and addressed.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. Staff had received training appropriate to their roles and any further training needs had been identified and planned.
• 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 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 they acted on.

We saw one area of outstanding practice:

• Patients with learning disabilities were routinely offered appointments at times where they would not expect to have to wait long to be seen. For example first thing in the morning or at the start of a planned surgery session. This was in an attempt to meet these patient’s specific needs and to reduce any reservations they may have had about attending the practice.

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

The provider should:

• Improve the systems used to record training completed by staff. The practice was aware of the need to do this. We saw an action plan was already in place to support the collation of copies of training certificates from staff and dates of training completed. The action plan should be followed through to completion.
• Endeavour to improve the quality of minutes produced from meetings held internally, in particular records of multidisciplinary meetings held.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP 

Chief Inspector of General Practice