Archived: Westfield Health Centre

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of Danum Medical Services Ltd at Westfield Health Centre on 21 August 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. Staff had received training appropriate to their roles.
• There were systems in place to reduce risks to patient safety, for example infection prevention and control procedures and health and safety assessments.
• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and to report incidents, near misses and any identified safeguarding issues.
• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand.
• The practice sought patient views on how improvements could be made to the service, through the use of patient surveys and the practice’s patient participation group (PPG).
• Urgent appointments were available for patients the same day as requested.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and were involved in care and decisions about their treatment.

We saw one area of outstanding practice:

• The practice funded a private taxi service for those patients who found it difficult to access the practice. This was funded at the discretion of the practice based on their knowledge of the patient.

However there were areas where the provider should make improvements:

• The doctors working at the practice required further training on the clinical system in order to access electronic registers i.e. Quality and Outcomes Framework performance.
• Although there was an established timetable for clinical and non-clinical staff meetings, there was no process in place to share information with staff members who were not present.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice