23 June 2016
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced focused inspection at The Dove Medical Practice on 23 June 2016.
During our previous inspection of the practice on 10 December 2015 the practice was rated requires improvement for safe and effective domains leading to an overall rating of requires improvement. The practice was issued with a requirement notice for breach in regulation 19 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 Fit and proper persons employed. This inspection was to review the action taken by the provider to meet both the regulatory requirements where we had previously identified a breach and to report on the action taken for any other issues within the safe and effective domains. For this reason we have only rated the location for the safe and effective domains. The report should therefore be read in conjunction with the full inspection report published in March 2016.
At this inspection we found the practice had made changes since their previous inspection in December 2015 and was now meeting the requirements of the breach identified at the previous inspection. We also found that sufficient action had been taken regarding other issues identified at the previous inspection. This meant that the practice was now rated good for both safe and effective domains leading to an overall rating of good.
Specifically we found that since the last inspection, the practice had:
- A robust system in place for sharing, learning and analysing significant events.
- The practice had implemented a new recruitment policy that ensured all necessary employment checks for staff such as evidence of satisfactory conduct in previous employment were being carried out. We saw evidence to demonstrate that the new processes were being followed.
- Put in place a new telephone triage system to improve the processes for making non-urgent appointments. A patient survey had been carried out in conjunction with the patient participation group (PPG) to get patient feedback regarding the new system.
- Reviewed policies and procedures to ensure they were practice specific and to enable better monitoring of processes.
- Made targeted and focused efforts to improve patient outcomes in areas identified for improvement. The practice was previously identified as an outlier for QOF (or other national) clinical targets for diabetes, hypertension and emergency admissions. However, at this inspection we saw evidence to demonstrate significant improvements in these areas and in almost all cases the latest unpublished QOF data showed that the practice was now performing in line with local and national averages.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice