Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Drs. Lawson, Scales, Tarrant & Napper on 18 May 2016. Overall the practice was rated as good. However, breaches of the legal requirements were found leading to a rating of requires improvement in the key question of Safe. After the inspection the practice wrote to us to say what they would do to meet the legal requirements in relation to the safety of the practice.
We undertook a focussed follow up inspection at Drs. Lawson, Scales, Tarrant & Napper on 17 January 2017 to check that the practice had met the requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to those requirements. Overall the practice is now rated as good for providing safe services.
You can read the full comprehensive report which followed the inspection in May 2016 by selecting the 'all reports' link for Drs. Lawson, Scales, Tarrant & Napper on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:
- The practice had addressed the issues identified during the previous inspection.
- Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
- Vaccines were stored and managed appropriately in line with Public Health England guidance.
- The practice had a number of policies and procedures to govern activity, and we saw that these had been reviewed.
- Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. All incidents and significant events had been reported and investigated. For example, following a vaccine fridge failure in 2015 practice procedures were now appropriately followed. For example, a power cut to the practice the week before the reinspection was clearly documented and actions were appropriately followed.
- The practice had developed systems to monitor expiry dates for emergency medicines and other equipment, for example spillage kits.
- The practice improved the complaints procedure by including details of the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman in patient information.
- The practice ensured clinical waste bags were labelled in line with current legislation and guidance.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice