DOCTORS and staff at a Tavistock practice are pleased to have been given an overall rating of ‘good’ from an inspection report published this month.

Abbey Surgery underwent an inspection in December by the Quality Care Commission (CQC) — the independent regulator of health and social care in England — its first under the CQC’s new programme of inspections. It was given an overall rating of good, with a result of ‘good’ in four categories — safe, caring, responsive and well-led — but was deemed to require improvement in the category ‘effective’.

In a letter from the chief inspector of general practice Professor Steve Field, from the CQC, said: ‘Overall the practice is rated as good. Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and to report incidents and near misses. There was an open and transparent approach to safety and a system in place for reporting and recording significant events. Urgent appointments were always available on the day they were requested, however some patients reported long waits beyond their appointment times for routine and urgent appointments.’

He added that the majority of patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment and the practice had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.

However, he said the areas where the surgery needed to make improvements were in establishing and operating effective audit and governance systems to evaluate and improve practice. This is in respect of having a programme of clinical audits and re-audits to demonstrate improved patient outcomes.

It also needed to assess, monitor and mitigate risks relating to the heath, safety and welfare of service users, in respect of reviewing practice procedures for excluding patients from the quality outcomes framework programme so that all eligible patients were offered a review of their health.

Darren Newland, practice manager at Abbey Surgery, said: ‘We are really pleased to have passed such a rigorous inspection. It’s our first actual inspection since the new system has been in place.

‘We always hope to get a good result — you can read up and prepare as much as you want but until the inspection actually happens, you don’t know if you’re doing it to a high enough standard.

‘The result is down to absolute teamwork by the staff and the wonderful support and comments from all our patients have helped.’