North Street Medical Care

Updated 21 December 2023

North Street Medical Care is located at:

North Street Medical Care

274 North Street

Romford

RM1 4QJ

The practice has a branch surgery at:

Chadwell Heath Health Centre

Ground Floor

Ashton Gardens

Romford, Essex

RM6 6RT

The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, maternity and midwifery services and treatment of disease, disorder or injury and surgical procedures. These are delivered from both sites.

The practice offers services from both a main practice and a branch surgery. Patients can access services at either surgery.

The practice is situated within the North East London (NEL) Integrated Care System (ICS) * General Medical Services (GMS) (APMS)) to a patient population of about 20,770. This is part of a contract held with NHS England.

The practice is part of a wider network of GP practices Marshalls Primary Care Network.

Information published by Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the sixth decile (six of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others.

According to the latest available data, the ethnic make-up of the practice area is 5.1% Asian, 87.5% White, 4.8% Black, and 2.1% Mixed.

There is a team of 5 partners and 5 salaried doctors GPs who provide cover at both practices. The practice has a team of 4 nurses who provide nurse led clinics for long-term condition of use of both the main and the branch locations. The GPs are supported at the practice by a team of reception/administration staff. The practice manager and assistant practice manager are based at the main location to provide managerial oversight.

The practice is open between 8am to 6.30 pm Monday to Friday. The practice offers a range of appointment types including online, book on the day, telephone consultations and advance appointments.

Patients had access to a enhanced access appointments service monday evenings from 6.30pm to 8pm (with 2 clinicians), Tuesday evenings 6.30pm to 8pm (with 1 clinician) and alternate Saturday mornings 9am to1pm (with a average of 4-5 clinicians).

Out of hours access services were operated by the local health federation and were open from Monday to friday 6.30pm tp 8pm and saturday and Sunday from 10am to 8pm. Receptionists could book into these apppontments directly and 33% of appointments were ringfenced for the NHS 111 service and the urgent care services.

Updated 21 December 2023

We carried out an announced focused assessment of the key question responsive at North Street Medical Care on 23 November 2023. Overall, the practice is rated as good and the key question for providing a responsive service is n ow rated requires improvement.

Safe - not inspected, rating of good carried forward from previous inspection.

Effective - not inspected, rating of good carried forward from previous inspection.

Caring - not inspected, rating of good carried forward from previous inspection.

Responsive – Requires Improvement.

Well-led - not inspected, rating of good carried forward from previous inspection.

Following our previous inspection in March 2019 the practice was rated good overall and for all key questions.

The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for North Street Meical Care on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Why we carried out this inspection.

We carried out this assessment as part of our work to understand how practices are working to try to meet peoples demands for access and to better understand the experiences of people who use services and providers.

We recognise the work that GP practices have been engaged in to continue to provide safe, quality care to the people they serve. We know staff are carrying this out whilst the demand for general practice remains exceptionally high, with more appointments being provided than ever. However, this challenging context, access to general practice remains a concern for people.

Our strategy makes a commitment to deliver regulation driven by people’s needs and experiences of care. These assessments of the responsive key question include looking at what practices are doing innovatively to improve patient access to primary care and sharing this information to drive improvement.

How we carried out the inspection/review

This assessment was carried out remotely. It did not include a site visit.

The process included:

• Conducting an interview with the provider and members of staff using video conferencing.

• Reviewing patient feedback from a range of sources

• Requesting evidence from the provider.

• Reviewing data, we hold about the provider.

• Seeking information/feedback from relevant stakeholders

Our findings

We based our judgement of the responsive key question on a combination of:

• what we found when we met with the provider

• information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and

• information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

We found that:

• During the assessment process, the provider highlighted the actions they have taken to make improvements to the responsiveness of the service for their patient population.
• However, the GP survey patient over the last two to three years had remained in parts below the national average. For example, the percentage of respondents to the survey who responded positively to how easy it was to get through to someone at their GP practice on the phone had remained below the national average since 2019.
• In addition, the percentage of respondents to the survey who were very satisfied or fairly satisfied with their GP practice appointment times had remained below the national average since 2019.

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

• Continue to improve patient access.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care