THE Weaverham Surgery has undergone a change of fortunes after a report by the Care Quality Commission observed many improvements at the practice.

CQC rated the surgery as ‘good’ in the categories of leadership, safety, responsiveness, effectiveness and how caring the service is.

The inspector said: “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.

“The most recent results from the GP national patient survey (August 2018) showed patient satisfaction with the service for making an appointment, appointment times, overall experience and getting through to the practice by telephone were below local and national averages.

“The provider had made changes to the service to address this and was continuing to monitor patient satisfaction through patient feedback.”

58 per cent of respondents to NHS England’s GP Patient Survey gave the practice a ‘good’ rating for overall experience in 2017.

Since then though the surgery has made considerable improvements and the manager at the surgery is delighted to see that this is reflected in the new CQC report.

Paul Deeley, manager at Weaverham Surgery said: “The GP partners and staff are really pleased with the report.

“This time as well the report discusses how we deal with different population groups and we were very pleased to be rated ‘good’ for all individual groups as well.”

The surgery was also rated ‘good’ for how it treats older people, younger people, families, those experiencing poor mental health, working age people including students and people who recently retired as well as vulnerable people.

The inspector did include ways for the practice to keep on improving the service.

The inspector said: “Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should introduce a system to monitor two-week rule referrals to ensure patients receive the tests they are referred for.”

It was also suggested that the care provider should record a risk assessment to demonstrate how the range of emergency medications held was determined.

The inspector was particularly impressed with the efforts to improve the experiences of people using the surgery.

The inspector said: “There was a system in place for investigating and responding to patient feedback including complaints.

“There was a focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.

“Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns and report incidents and near misses.”