Background to this inspection
Updated
19 July 2019
Docklands Medical Centre is located on the Isle of Dogs in East London and is situated within NHS Tower Hamlets Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). The practice provides services to approximately 8834 patients under a General Medical Service (GMS) contract (this is a contract between general practices and NHS England for delivering primary care services to local communities). The practice has a website: www.docklandsmedicalcentre.com.
Tower Hamlets CCG consists of 36 GP practices split into eight networks. Docklands Medical Centre is part of the ‘Healthy Island Network’, comprising of four practices in the locality.
The practice is registered with the CQC to carry on the following regulated activities: Diagnostic and screening procedures; Family planning; Maternity and midwifery services; Surgical procedures; and Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.
The clinical team at the practice includes: four salaried GPs (two male and two female, collectively providing 24 clinical sessions per week), one female advanced nurse practitioner providing eight clinical sessions per week, one female practice nurse providing eight clinical sessions per week, two female healthcare assistants working 20 hours per week, and one female phlebotomist working 6.5 hours per week. There is also a full-time practice manager, a reception manager (working four days per week) and a team of reception and administrative staff. Docklands Medical Centre is also a training practice.
The practice’s opening hours are:
- Monday and Tuesday from 7am to 6.30pm;
- Wednesday from 8am to 7.30pm;
- Thursday and Friday from 8am to 6.30pm.
Appointments are available:
- Monday and Tuesday from 7am to 5pm;
- Wednesday from 8am to 7.20pm;
- Thursday from 8am to 5pm;
- Friday from 8am to 5.50pm.
Appointments include home visits, telephone consultations and online consultations. Urgent
appointments are available for patients who need them. Patients telephoning when the practice is closed are directed to the local out-of-hours service provider.
Information published by Public Health England rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as six, on a scale of one to ten. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level ten the lowest. In England, people living in the least deprived areas of the country live around 20 years longer in good health than people in the most deprived areas.
Updated
19 July 2019
We previously carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of Docklands Medical Centre on 6 February 2019. At the inspection, we rated the practice as good overall, but as requires improvement for providing safe services because:
- We found incidents of unsafe prescribing of some high risk medicines and there were no prescribing protocols in place for some high risk medicines.
The full report of the February 2019 comprehensive inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Docklands Medical Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
We carried out an announced focused inspection of Docklands Medical Centre on 9 July 2019 to check whether the practice was providing safe care.
We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service is on a combination of:
- what we found when we inspected;
- information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services; and
- information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.
At this focused inspection on 9 July 2019, we found the practice had made improvements.
We have rated this practice as good overall.
We rated the practice as good for providing safe services because:
- Following our previous inspection, the practice had reviewed all patients prescribed high risk medicines to ensure any patients requiring action were dealt with appropriately and the practice discussed the results of this review at a clinical meeting.
- The practice had created prescribing protocols for methotrexate, warfarin, lithium and azathioprine, and shared these with staff.
- We checked patient records and found there was evidence of appropriate monitoring and recording of patients’ test results, and no evidence of any unsafe prescribing.
- The practice had introduced additional failsafe processes, involving administrative staff as well as clinicians, to ensure patients on high risk medicines were monitored appropriately.
We also found the practice had acted upon a suggested area of improvement from the previous inspection, relating to encouraging the uptake of cervical and breast cancer screening rates:
- The practice was aware of the difficulty in increasing the uptake of cervical screening due to the high turnover amongst the younger and working age practice population.
- In January, April and June 2019 the practice had focused on calling in different age groups of women for cervical screening, as well as the usual monthly cervical screening recalls, to try and improve uptake.
- The practice showed us information on the clinical system which demonstrated that 61% of patients aged 25 to 49 years and 83% of patients aged 50 to 64 years had had a cervical screening in the last 3.5 years.
- The practice nurse is leading a project with the practice’s local network to have a public information stand situated in the local area to increase awareness and the importance of cervical screening amongst the local community; this is planned for January 2020.
- With regards to breast cancer screening, the practice is now actively monitoring the list of patients who do not attend the screening unit. The reception manager carries out regular searches to identify these patients and then the practice writes a follow-up letter to the patient, setting out the importance of the screening and providing contact details for the breast screening unit.
- Practice staff told us they are also monitoring patients who do not attend for bowel cancer screening and are following them up by letter.
Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence table.
Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care