Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
Harbourside Family Practice is situated in the urban area of Portishead, North Somerset. It has approximately 9300 patients registered with a majority ethnicity of White British.
We undertook a comprehensive announced inspection on 24th February 2015. The overall rating for the practice was good. Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing well-led, effective, caring and responsive services. It was also good for providing services for older patients, those with long term conditions and families, children and young patients. In addition it was good for providing services for working age patients, those whose circumstances made them vulnerable and people experiencing poor mental health including those living with dementia. However, the safe domain required improvement in relation to the recruitment procedures to ensure patients are safe and their health and welfare needs are met by staff who have the qualifications, skills and experience necessary for the work to be performed. We made a requirement notice for the practice to implement the necessary changes to ensure the recruitment process was safe. We received an action plan which identified all the actions required would be in place by 30th June 2015. We visited on the 29 July 2015 to undertake a focussed inspection and to review the actions taken.
At this focussed inspection we reviewed the information contained in the staff recruitment folders and we found the practice had responded appropriately to the areas they needed to address and improvements had been made. As a result of this services were now safer for patients, staff and visitors to the practice.
Our key findings were as follows:
The practice had reviewed the recruitment files for staff and had taken remedial action to ensure they could demonstrate that staff employed for the purposes of carrying on the regulated activity were suitably qualified, skilled and experienced for their role. We found they had responded appropriately to the areas they should address and improvements had been made so services were now safer for patients, staff and visitors to the practice.
Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP
Chief Inspector of General Practice
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice