Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
This is the report of findings from our inspection of St Hilda’s practice. The practice is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide primary care services.
The practice is rated as good.
Our key findings were as follows:
The practice provided services to a large geographical and rural area, the services had been
designed to meet the needs of the local population.
Feedback from patients was overwhelmingly positive, they told us staff communicated effectively and treated them with respect and kindness. Patients told us they were able to access timely appointments in the practice.
Staff reported feeling supported and able to voice any concerns or make suggestions for
improvement.
We saw several areas of good practice including:
- A patient centred approach to delivering care and treatment. All staff were aware of and sympathetic to, the particular difficulties faced by the local population. The practice had taken action to bring additional services to patients to help address some of those issues.
- The practice had a good governance system in place, was well organised and actively sought to learn from performance data, incidents and feedback.
- The practice sought the opinions of staff and patients, actively working with a well-established patient participation group (PPG).
However, there were also areas of practice where the practice provider needs to make improvements.
Importantly, the provider must:
- Improve the monitoring of expiry dates of medicines to ensure they are safe to use.
- Improve the storage of blank prescriptions to ensure that these are stored in line with national guidance and kept securely at all times.
Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP
Chief Inspector of General Practice