We consider information about the quality of care provided when we look at the five key questions - safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.
For each GP practice that we inspect, we will rate at two levels:
Level 1: A rating for each key question for the location/service. This is based on relevant evidence of how GP practices personalise people’s care and provide care for different groups of people.
Level 2: An overall rating for the service. This is an aggregated rating informed by our findings at level 1.
The following example shows how the two levels work together.
| Safe | Effective | Caring | Responsive | Well-led | Overall | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location/service | Good | Good | Good | Good | Requires improvement | Good |
Sometimes, we won’t be able to award a rating. This could be because:
- the service is new
- we don’t have enough evidence
- the service has recently been reconfigured, such as being taken over by a new provider
In these cases, we will use the term ‘inspected but not rated’.
We may also suspend a rating at any level. For example, we may have identified significant concerns which, after reviewing but before a full assessment, lead us to re-consider our previous rating. In this case, we would suspend our rating and then investigate the concerns.