The Mews Practice

Updated 2 April 2020

The Mews Practice is a private general medical practice service based in Guildford in Surrey. The registered provider is The Mews Practice Limited.

The service is provided from:

The Mews, Elmdon House, 116 London Road, Guildford, Surrey, GU1 1TN.

The service is run from a suite of rooms on the ground and first floor of the building which was leased by the provider.

The service provides a range of GP services including consultation, child and adult immunisations, cervical screening, travel vaccinations, ear micro suction, well man and well women screening and advice, sexual health advice and testing, home visits and medicals. The service also provides nutritional support, intravenous vitamin drips and regenerative therapies which are outside the scope of registration with CQC.

Patients can access the services as members and non-members paying for the consultation and provided treatments. If required, following a consultation, a private prescription is issued to the patient to take to a community pharmacy of their choice or medicines may be dispensed by the service.

Further information about the service can be found on their website: .

The practice runs a seven-day service. The opening times are 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm on Saturdays and 9am to 1pm on Sundays. If care is required outside of these times an answerphone message directs patients to the NHS 111 service.

There are currently six GPs (four female, two male) who all work in the NHS as well as at The Mews Practice. The practice works in partnership with four clinicians who are specialists in their field (two male, two female), a nutritional therapist, wellbeing therapist and psychosexual therapist and three health care assistants. The clinicians are supported by a practice manager who is also the director, business and finance manager, a patient liaison manager and small team of patient liaison staff.

The Mews Practice is registered with the Care Quality Commission to deliver the following regulated activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, family planning, surgical procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

How we inspected this service

During our visit we:

• Spoke with a range of staff, including two GPs, the director, the registered manager and members of the patient liaison team, two of whom were also health care assistants
• Looked at information the practice used to deliver care and treatment plans.
• Reviewed documents relating to the service.

Updated 2 April 2020

We carried out an unannounced focused inspection at The Mew Practice on 12 September 2019 in response to concerns which affected a very small number of patients. We returned to the practice on 3 and 8 October to complete a fully comprehensive inspection.

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 general exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of service and these are set out in Two of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. At The Mews Practice services are provided to patients under arrangements made by their employer or an insurance provider with whom the service user holds an insurance policy (other than a standard health insurance policy). These types of arrangements are exempt by law from CQC regulation. Therefore, at The Mews Practice, we were only able to inspect the services which are not arranged for patients by their employers or an insurance provider with whom the patient holds a policy (other than a standard health insurance policy). The Mews Practice also provides regenerative therapies and nutritional support which are not within CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

The patient liaison manager is the registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

As part of our inspection we also asked for CQC comment cards to be completed by patients prior to our inspection. We received 14 comment cards which were all positive about the standard of care received. Patients told us that there were treated professionally in a caring manner.

Our key findings were:

• The service 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 service routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence-based research or guidelines.
• Staff maintained the necessary skills and competence to support the needs of patients.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Appointments were available seven days a week.
• The practice was proactive in seeking patient feedback and identifying and solving concerns.
• The service was offered on a membership basis or a private, fee paying basis to adults and children.
• The culture of the service encouraged candour, openness and honesty.
• The service did not always ensure the proper and safe management of medicines.
• The service did not always ensure that information was shared appropriately with patients’ registered GPs.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to develop clinical audit programme to support improvement.
• Consider reviewing the labelling of medicines dispensed for patients to ensure they reflect best practice.
• Review and improve how information is shared with the patients' registered GP.
• Continue to strengthen procedures for the storage and reconstitution of vaccines.

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