Archived: Northumberland Health

This practice is rated as good overall. (Previous inspection – 9 July 2015 – rating – good).

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? - Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Widdrington Medical Practitioners on 24 April 2018, as part of our planned inspection programme.

At this inspection we found:

• The practice had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the practice learned from them and improved their processes.
• Staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to carry out their roles.
• The practice routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care and treatment they provided. Staff ensured that care and treatment was delivered in line with evidence- based guidelines.
• The practice organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs. They took account of patient needs and preferences.
• Overall, patients found the appointment system easy to use and reported that they were able to access care and treatment when they needed it.
• There was a very strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.
• Staff involved patients in decisions about their care and treatment and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• The practice had a clear vision to deliver high quality care and promote good outcomes for patients.
• Governance processes and systems for business planning, risk management, performance and quality improvement operated effectively

We also saw an area of outstanding practice:

• One of the GP partners had devised a clinical system safety algorithm to help ensure that, following any type of contact with a patient, the practice’s IT system automatically identified any outstanding clinical tasks or overdue reviews. The algorithm provided staff with access to an appropriately worded letter which they were then able to issue to the patient. In addition, they had also devised other algorithms to carry out automatic searches to check whether patients prescribed high-risk medicines had received appropriate monitoring and if patients had any overdue blood tests that needed to be carried out. This had helped the practice to achieve their very good Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) results.