Clean sweep for Swindon GP surgery as inspectors score it good across the board

Park Lane Practice’s positive scoring by the Care Quality Commission means it has now joined Swindon’s other 24 GP surgeries in being rated as either good or outstanding by the healthcare regulator.

Staff at Park Lane, which provides care and treatment to almost 7,000 people in the central Swindon area, spent the first six months of 2018 implementing a host of positive changes, after a CQC inspection in February saw the team given an overall rating of requires improvement. Inspectors returned to the practice in September and saw for themselves that improvements, such as a new telephone booking system and an enhanced process for identifying and preventing risks to patient safety, were contributing to an overall better patient experience.

The CQC’s visit in September concluded with Park Lane Practice being awarded a rating of good in each inspection area: safety, effectiveness, caring, responsiveness and leadership.

Rob Charles, Practice Manager, said: “Everybody at Park Lane Practice is absolutely delighted by this fantastic news. “We were clearly disappointed to have been told to improve earlier in the year, but we used it as an opportunity to take stock of where we were and make further changes that would enable us to become the kind of GP surgery we all aspired to be. “More than anything else, we are just incredibly happy the inspectors recognised our efforts and the work we carried out to make things better for our patients.

“It’s been quite a journey, but we fully intend to keep this momentum going and build on our success to ensure that patients now, and in the future, continue to receive the best possible care each time they visit Park Lane.” Across Swindon and Shrivenham, there are more than 20 GP practices providing primary care services to a population of around 240,000.

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