Background to this inspection
Updated
29 November 2019
The Northern Medical Centre is located at 580 Holloway Road, London, N7 6LB. The surgery has good transport links and there is a pharmacy located nearby. The practice holds a General Medical Services (GMS) contract with NHS England. This is a contract between general practices and NHS England for delivering primary care services to local communities.
The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, maternity and midwifery services, surgical procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.
The practice has a patient list of approximately 8,900. Approximately 13% of patients are aged 65 or older and approximately 32% are under 18 years old. Forty nine percent have a long standing health condition.
The practice is open from 8.30am to 7pm on a Monday, 8.30am to 6.30pm on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and 9am to 1pm on Saturday. Appointments for GPs and nurses are between 8.30am to 11.30am and 2.30pm to 6pm on a week day (6.30pm to 7PM on a Monday for extended hours clinics) and 9am to 1pm on Saturday. Saturday appointments are pre booked appointments only. When the practice was closed, patients were referred to an out of hours service provider.
The services provided included child health care, ante and post natal care, immunisations, sexual health and contraception advice, management of long term conditions clinics, practice based mental health services and nursing home support. The staff team comprised of four partner GPs (one male and three female), two long term sessional GPs (one male and one female), two female practice nurses and a triage nurse, two pharmacists, a female healthcare assisrant, practice manager, deputy practice manager and administrative staff.
Updated
29 November 2019
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Northern Medical Centre on 26 September 2019.
We previously inspected the practice in April 2015, we rated the practice as Requires Improvement for providing a safe service and good for providing an effective, caring, responsive and well-led service. The practice was rated as good overall. Included amongst the issues we identified, the practice did not have suitable arrangements in place to check the expiry dates of emergency medicines, suitable arrangements were not in place for the storage of clinical waste whilst awaiting collection and there were not cleaning schedules in place for hand held clinical equipment such as ear syringe, nebuliser and spirometer. The practice was issued with a requirement notice for Regulation 12 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014, safe care and treatment.
We carried out a focused inspection on 26 November 2015 to confirm the practice had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breach in regulation we identified in our previous inspection. At the inspection on 26 November 2015, we rated the practice good for providing a safe service and good overall as we found that the issues previously identified had been addressed and the requirement notice had been fulfilled.
At this inspection we based our judgement of the quality of care at this service 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.
We have rated this practice as Good overall.
We found that:
- Published child immunisation figures were below the minimum World Health Organisation target of 90%.
- Published Cervical Screening figures were below the local and national averages
- Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
- The practice organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs.
- Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way.
- The practice provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.
- The way the practice was led and managed and promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centre care.
The areas where the provider should make improvements are:
- Review the system for the identification of carers to enable this group of patients to access the care and support they need.
- Consider ways to improve child immunisation and cervical screening figures.
Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.
Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care