North Curry Health Centre

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at North Curry Health Centre on 2 June 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 older patients, patients with long-term conditions, the working aged, recently retired and students. It was also good for providing services for families, children and young patients, patients whose circumstances make them vulnerable and patients with poor mental health including those living 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 found it easy to make an appointment with a named GP and that there was continuity of care, 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 it acted on.

We saw some outstanding practice:

• The provider had good systems in place to monitor, manage and audit anticoagulation and identification of atrial fibrillation (abnormal heart rhythm) which enhanced patient care and showed that the practice achieved standards above best practice guidelines.
• The practice had increased provision of palliative care for the practice population including opportunities for admission to the local hospice and access to out of hours emergency care by raising in excess of £28,700 for the local hospice.
• The practice had regular and innovative training for clinical staff on dealing with emergencies in primary care. We saw that this focused training had resulted in successful outcomes for patients with a medical emergency.

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

Importantly the provider should:

• Consider how it could maintain one database system for all staff training.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice