Archived: Eaves Lane Surgery Also known as SSP Health Ltd

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Eaves Lane Surgery on 12 August 2015. Overall the practice is rated as good.

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

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses. Opportunities for learning from internal and external incidents were maximised.

• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed.
• Patients’ needs were assessed and care was planned and delivered following best practice guidance. Staff had received training appropriate to their roles and any further training needs where needed had been identified and planned.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.

• The practice worked closely with other organisations and with the local community in planning how services were provided to ensure that they meet people’s needs.

• The practice implemented suggestions for improvements and made changes to the way it delivered services as a consequence of feedback from patients and from the Patient Participation Group (PPG). The practice proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on.

• Information about how to complain was available and easy to understand.

• The practice employed a patient liaison officer to assist patients to give feedback and discuss any issues they may have at the time they were in the surgery.

• The practice had a clear vision which had quality and safety as its top priority. High standards were promoted and owned by all practice staff with evidence of cohesive team working across all roles.

• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management.

We saw areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice had engaged with the local community and the practice nurse attended the local community centre on a specific day, in an attempt to reach hard to reach groups and people who are reluctant to visit their GP. If any underlying health issues were identified the patients (if they belonged to the practice) were offered an appointment at the practice and patients from other practices were advised to attend their own GP.

• The practice had a robust safety system in place to safeguard patients prescribed disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) for example Methotrexate.

However, there were also areas of practice where the provider needs to make improvements.

Action the provider SHOULD take to improve:

• The practice should deepen the scope of learning and improvement that can come from their audit programme.

• The practice should ensure the documentation used to record audit and significant events analysis is supported by evidence of reflection, investigation, changes made and the learning from this analysis.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice