Archived: Urmston Group Practice

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Urmston Group Practice on 21 January 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing effective, caring, responsive and well led services. It was also good for providing services for all the population groups. It required improving for providing safe services.

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

• The practice were moving to new updated premises. Plans to move have been under consideration for a number of years and were finally coming to a head in September 2015. All plans for improvements to the practice such as infection control requirements and the implementation of some policies and procedures had been deferred until the move.
• One of the GPs at the practice had been nominated and awarded for ‘Going the Extra Mile’.
• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, appropriately reviewed and addressed.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed, with the exception of some training aspects and the availability of some equipment to deal with emergency situations such as patients with difficulty breathing or fainting.
• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment and information about services and how to complaint was available and easy to understand. Most patients found access to the service acceptable and the practice were continually reviewing access to see if it could be improved.

The areas where the provider must make improvements are :

• Ensure that all staff are appropriately trained in infection control and ensure infection control issues highlighted in the infection control audit are addressed.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are :

• Ensure that there is equipment available for patients who may present with breathing difficulties or suffer from fainting spells.
• Ensure that all staff are appropriately trained and receive regular updates in safeguarding.
• Ensure recruitment arrangements include all necessary employment checks, such as Disclosure and Barring Service checks (or evidence and reason if it is felt these are not required) for all staff.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice