In this monthly report, FPM looks in detail at what the CQC have publicly reported from their GP practice inspections during May 2026, all anonymised. We highlight some of the behaviours that won practices Outstanding ratings, and the reasons some practices were scored Requires Improvement, or Inadequate. Do you recognise any of the observations the CQC picked up, either good or bad?

'OUTSTANDING' COMMENTS AND PRAISE FROM THE CQC (scores of 4)

EFFECTIVE:

• Assessing Needs: improving care for people with frailties was an area where one practice scored very highly. Patients from the Surgery who had received a more intensive, proactive care required 25% less unplanned care in the 3 months afterwards than in the previous 3 months.

• How staff, teams and services work together: The same practice rolled out an automated process to follow up people overdue for monitoring of their long-term condition. Every Wednesday the software checked against the templates and identified 40 people with the most overdue monitoring. The system automatically sent these people a text message, to allow them to book an appointment.

RESPONSIVE:

• Care provision, Integration and continuity: So that people did not have to make unnecessary extra visits to the surgery, staff had access to a dashboard of all monitoring; staff checked this whenever someone contacted the service or came in for an appointment so that everything that was needed could be completed on the same visit. The practice also ran ‘health check’ sessions at a local mosque, including checking people’s blood pressure and weight, and ran sessions with information and advice about diabetes and chronic kidney disease (CKD). 

• Equity in access: The practice had introduced same-day appointments with a prescribing clerk to help people with prescription queries and because this worked well, had recently introduced a same-day callback list for people with queries about matters like referrals, Fit Notes and medical reports

• Equity in experience and outcomes: The practice looked after people with learning disability who lived in 2 supported living settings. Leaders had identified that people with learning disability were at additional risk of developing long-term health conditions related to diet. To help reduce this, the practice ran food education and cooking classes for these people, with a local charity. 

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'REQUIRES IMPROVEMENT' / 'INADEQUATE' RATINGS (scores of 1 or 2):

SAFE:

• Safeguarding: although a practice had a safeguarding policy, it did not contain the name of the practice safeguarding lead. There was no list of recommended safeguarding codes to ensure vulnerable patients could be identified by staff. The safeguarding lead told CQC they had not yet carried out an annual audit of children who were not brought to appointments, or an audit of attendances at accident and emergency services.

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• Safe and effective staffing: Staff vaccinations were not always kept up to date in line with Green Book guidance. On the day of the CQC inspection, some recruitment records were missing. For example, there was no record of employment references or proof of identity for a clinical member of staff. 5 members of staff who had not completed health and safety training, one non-clinical member of staff had not completed fire safety or sepsis awareness training

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WELL LED

• Governance, management and sustainability: Regular searches of the clinical record system were being run to identify patient needs, but a review of clinical records showed that this was not always effective. Consistency in the monitoring of people’s medicines was needed to make sure blood tests were carried out prior to a review or prescription being issued.

• Partnerships and communities: At the time of the assessment, staff explained they were not engaged in any local community projects to improve the practice and quality of care for the local population.

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