West End Medical Centre

Updated 26 May 2022

The provider, Dr Dannis Wing Kuen Tang, provides services from a single location, West End Medical Centre, as a sole private GP servicing the London Chinese community. The practice is open between 1pm and 6pm, seven days a week, except bank holidays. There is no out of hours service but patients can contact the provider’s mobile phone in an emergency.

The practice offers booked appointments and people can also attend without an appointment. The service is available to adults and children and is located at Suite 5, Egmont House, 116 Shaftesbury avenue, London, W1D 5EW. The practice is located on the second floor and is not accessible by lift. When patients contact the practice, they are advised of its location.

The practice provides general medical care treatment and advice intended to compliment services available to its patients on the NHS. If a chronic or serious non-urgent disease is identified, the patient is referred to their NHS GP for further management and subsequent hospital referral. For those with private health insurance, referrals can be made to a private specialist clinician or a private hospital. Patients requiring urgent hospital attention are referred to local NHS hospital trusts. Patients who request services which are generally covered by NHS healthcare programmes such as vaccinations, cervical screening and ante natal care are advised to go to their NHS GP.

In addition to medical consultations, the practice provides services for obtaining pathology samples, such as blood and urine tests, for patients who may be in need of investigation which is collected by a contracted laboratory.

The practice also dispenses commonly used medicines.

Before the inspection we reviewed pre-inspection information submitted by the provider, requested by the CQC.

During our visit we spoke with the lead GP and practice receptionist (who comprise the practice team), reviewed personal care records of patients and also reviewed staff records. No patients were available to speak to on the day of inspection.

The provider is registered with the CQC to carry out the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures and the treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

Updated 26 May 2022

How we inspected this service

We carried out an announced inspection at West End Medical Centre. This was as part of our inspection programme; the service had previously been inspected but not rated.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of regulated activities and services and these are set out in Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

The key questions at this inspection were rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

Our key findings were:

• The service had good systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When they did happen, the service learned from them and improved their processes.
• The service routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence-based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients were able to access care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.

Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:

• Continue to develop clinical audits to include more areas of practice such as prescribing and referrals.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care