Archived: The Elms Medical Centre

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Elms Medical Practice on 6 September 2016. Overall the practice is rated as requires improvement.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

• Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence based guidance. Staff had been trained to provide them with the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.

• Some significant events were not recorded and minutes sometime held only minimal information. We saw no evidence that an overall analysis of the significant events had taken place.

• Staff were aware of their responsibilities regarding information sharing, documentation of safeguarding concerns. Vulnerable patients including children at risk of harm were not discussed regularly at practice meetings and a record of these meetings was not always kept.

• 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. Improvements were made to the quality of care as a result of complaints and concerns.

• The comment cards we received indicated that most patients found it easy to make an appointment. Three patients stated in the comment cards that they sometimes found it difficult to book an appointment.

• The practice had facilities and was equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• We were told that the practice  proactively  sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on. However, a record was not kept of meetings or of discussions held to demonstrate  this had taken place.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the duty of candour.

The areas where the provider must make improvements are:

• A system of ongoing clinical audit and re-audits must take place in a systematic way to monitor effectiveness of clinical care and improve patient outcomes.
• Clinical staff must provide protection for themselves and their patients when taking blood.

The areas where the provider should make improvement are:

• Significant events should be analysed for the purpose of learning and preventing incidents from recurring.

• A record should always be kept of  meetings held about vulnerable patients including children at risk of harm,  to ensure issues identified are actioned and monitored.

• A record should be kept of medicines held for the purpose of monitoring and auditing.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice