A HEREFORDSHIRE GP surgery has been praised for the kindness of its staff and its efforts to protect people during coronavirus in its latest Care Quality Commission inspection.

Inspectors carried out the inspection at Kington Medical Practice on November 30 by conducting staff interviews by video conferencing, inspecting records, and a short site visit, rating the practice on five key areas.

The practice received an overall rating of 'good, after it was rated as 'good' in the safe, effective, caring, and responsive categories, and told that improvement was needed in the well-led category.

The report praised the practice for the 'stringent' infection control measures it had taken during coronavirus, providing care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm, and enabling patients to access care and treatment in a timely way.

Inspectors said the practice had a wide range of kind, respectful, and skilled staff who were competent to carry out their roles, involved the public, staff and external partners to sustain high quality and sustainable care, and involved patients in decisions about their care.

The practice was found to manage incidents, complaints and issues with candour, openness and honesty, and actively participated in social prescribing, well-being, and befriending schemes facilitated through their primary care network.

It had also been influential in the delivery of primary care services since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, including setting up the first Covid-19 vaccination site in the Leominster area and stepping forward to become an ‘Amber Hub’ for patients.

But, while inspectors found there were clear responsibilities, roles, and systems of accountability and management, they said this needed strengthening in some areas, and they found one breach of regulations, with small gaps found in staff vaccination records.

Inspectors said they had raised this with the management team during the inspection and had been advised the surgery would build on their current system of recording staff vaccinations.

There was also no evidence of formal supervision in place for the nurse prescribers employed by the practice, although nurse prescribers confirmed they were supervised informally.

"Nurse prescribers told us that they had their prescribing practice regularly reviewed and also had access to clinical supervision however this was usually informal. Prescribers told us how they worked closely across the clinical, pharmacy and dispensary teams," the report said.

And while inspectors found some safety alerts, such as medicine recalls, were appropriately actioned and managed, the practice could not demonstrate it had acted on all alerts.

A spokesperson for the surgery said Kington Medical Practice has undertaken huge turnaround in recent years, becoming an independent surgery once again and striving to overcome historical difficulties, going from requiring assistance from the CCG when it was placed temporarily into special measures, to today’s outstanding achievements.

The surgery now boasts a full complement of five GPs, three assistant nurse practitioners, a clinical pharmacist and a nursing team of five and is the designated lead practice in the north and west Herefordshire primary care network, while their clinical operations manager is the clinical director for the network

"We pride ourselves on hosting both student nurses and trainee GPs who come to develop and train in our nurturing and inclusive practice, and have been the driving force behind Covid-19 ‘Amber hubs’ and vaccination delivery within the network, providing services staffed along with our colleagues from across the network for patients from all six practices," the spokesperson said.

"In relation to the couple of ‘gaps’ where staff immunisation status was not recorded, these have subsequently been updated.

"All safety alerts are received and filed electronically. The gaps related to dissemination of information of non-clinical alerts which we have subsequently implemented new process for.

"The auditing of nurse prescriber prescribing is good practice, all our ANPs are fully qualified independent prescribers. However, we have pledged to audit this prescribing on a quarterly basis and this will be overseen by our clinical operations manager, Dr S. McCaffrey"