FIRDALE Medical Practice has been rated ‘good’ in all areas by inspectors from the Care Quality Commission.

The practice, located on Firdale Road in Winnington, was last subject to an inspection in March last year, when it was rated ‘good’ overall, but ‘requiring improvement’ for providing responsive services.

Although there were no regulation breaches, inspectors said that patient experiences of accessing the practice had not been adequately monitored to allow improvements to be made.

But after a desk-based follow-up inspection to see whether the area requiring improvement had been addressed, inspectors were satisfied enough to upgrade this rating to ‘good’.

In her inspection report, Dr Rosie Benneyworth, chief inspector of primary medical services and integrated care, said: “We only focused on the areas requiring improvement, and found that the provider had satisfactorily addressed these areas.

“Therefore, the practice is now rated as ‘good’ for providing responsive services.

“As the issues from the previous inspection also affected all population groups, all population groups were originally rated as requiring improvement.

“We have now rated the practice as good for responsive care for all population groups as the issues have been addressed.

“We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.”

To improve further, Dr Benneyworth recommended that the practice should continue to ensure staff have the information they need about safeguarding concerns when booking appointments for patients.

Revised procedures for the management and security of uncollected prescriptions could be revised and all significant events recorded on one place so that patterns, trends and progress can be more easily identified.

Information about support groups should be made available on the practice website and the practice could ensure there is an effective system to manage verbal complaints.