26 October 2017
During an inspection looking at part of the service
Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice
We previously carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Wharf Family Practice on 30 August 2016. The overall rating for the practice was good with requires improvement for providing effective services. We found one breach of legal requirement and as a result we issued a requirement notice in relation to:
- Regulation 17 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulation 2014 – Good Governance
The full comprehensive report on the August 2016 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for The Wharf Family Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
This inspection was an announced focused inspection carried out on 26 October 2017 to confirm that the practice had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breaches in regulations that we identified in our previous inspection on 30 August 2016. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.
The effective domain is now rated as good and overall the practice remains rated as good.
Our key findings were as follows:
- The practice had improved the governance procedures in place to ensure patients with long term conditions were effectively managed. Action had been taken to address errors in the reporting system.
- The GPs and named senior nurses were responsible for completing the coding on the electronic patient record and were able to clearly describe the rationale for exception reporting.
- Staff had a clear understanding of the recall system for patients with long term conditions.
- The practice had improved their clinical exception rate from for exception reporting 21% to 14%.
- The practice manager had altered some of the standard letters sent to patients inviting them for a review to be more informative about the risks associated with the condition.
- The practice was taking positive action to address areas where results below the expectation.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice