Archived: Culcheth Medical Centre

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Culcheth Medical Centre on 20 May 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 all the population groups it serves.

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

• Systems were in place to ensure incidents and significant events were identified, investigated and reported. Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and to report incidents. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, appropriately reviewed and addressed.
• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered in line with best practice guidance. Staff had received training appropriate for their roles and any further training needs had been identified and planned.
• Patients spoke highly about the practice and its staff. They 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. Urgent appointments were available on the same day.
• 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 several areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice ensured patient experience played an important role in improving quality service delivery. The practices Patient Participation Group were an important part of this. The group undertook regular patient surveys and developed actions plans with the practice where negative comments were made. They held annual community events to raise the profile of the practice amongst the local community. They engaged local schools by inviting the young adults to their PPG meetings to gain their views on how services could be developed. Working with the practice the PPG had planned a local community event for this summer to specifically target those patients who are social isolated. The aim of this was to bring together older and more socially isolated patients to ensure they know the full range of services provided by the practice and to gain their views on how services could be improved.

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

Importantly the provider should;

• Improve the current system for clinical audit to ensure full and completed audits are undertaken.
• Ensure doctors have emergency drugs available for use or have in place a risk assessment to support their decision not to have these available for use in a patient’s home.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice