Archived: Prospect Medical Practice

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Prospect Medical Practice on 6 October 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good. We found the practice to be good for effective and caring services, responsive to people’s needs, and well-led. The practice is rated as requires improvement for safe services. The quality of care experienced by older people, by people with long term conditions and by families, children, and young people was good. Working age people, those in vulnerable circumstances and people experiencing poor mental health also received good quality care.

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.
• 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 did not have a patient participation group but did review feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.

We saw one area of outstanding practice:

• Outstanding culture was seen and demonstrated by the whole team involvement in the development of their mission statement and through a 360 degree feedback process.

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

Importantly the provider must

• Ensure that staff that undertake chaperone duties had received a disclosure and barring check (DBS) or had a written risk assessment completed.

Importantly the provider should

• Develop a patient participation group that would ensure that the practice gained feedback and engagement from patients in the delivery of its services.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice