Archived: Belsize Priory Medical Practice - Group

Updated 16 April 2015

Belsize Priory Medical Group Practice is a surgery located in the London Borough of Camden. The practice is part of the NHS Camden Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) which is made up of 40 practices. It currently holds a GMS contract and provides NHS services to 4296 patients. The practice serves a diverse population with many patients attending where English is not their first language. The practice does not have a large older population (5%) with 19% of the population under the age of 14. The practice is situated within a health centre shared with other primary medical services including midwives and physiotherapists. Consulting rooms are available on the ground floor for those with a physical disability. There are currently three GP’s (1 male and 2 Female), however one GP is currently on long term leave, one practice nurse, a healthcare assistant, a number of administrative staff and a practice manager. Appointments are available between 7.15am to 1.30pm and then 2pm to 6.30pm on a Monday, Tuesday and Friday. The practice is open for appointments until 7pm on a Thursday and closed on a Wednesday afternoon for staff training. Telephone consultations and home visits are also available for those patients unable to come to the practice.

The practice opted out of providing an out of hours service and refers patients to the local out-of-hours provider or the ‘111’ service.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures, family planning and the treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The CQC intelligent monitoring placed the practice in band 5. The intelligent monitoring tool draws on existing national data sources and includes indicators covering a range of GP practice activity and patient experience including the Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF) and the National Patient Survey. Based on the indicators, each GP practice has been categorised into one of six priority bands, with band six representing the best performance band. This banding is not a judgement on the quality of care being given by the GP practice; this only comes after a CQC inspection has taken place.

The practice provides a range of services including child health and immunisation, minor illness clinic, smoking cessation clinics and clinics for patients with long term conditions. The practice also provides health advice and blood pressure monitoring.

Updated 16 April 2015

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Belsize Priory Medical Group Practice on 1 December 2014. Overall the practice is rated as good.

Specifically, we found the practice to be good for providing safe, well-led, caring and responsive services. The practice required improvement for providing an effective service. It was also good for providing services for the provision of care to older people, those with long term conditions, working age (including those recently retires and students, those whose circumstances make them vulnerable and those experiencing poor mental health (including those with dementia). It required improvement for providing a service to families, children and young people.

Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:

• Staff understood and fulfilled their responsibilities to raise concerns, and to report incidents and near misses. Information about safety was recorded, monitored, appropriately reviewed and addressed.
• Risks to patients were assessed and well managed, with the exception of those relating to recruitment checks.
• Patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand.
• Urgent appointments were usually available on the day they were requested. However patients said that they sometimes had to wait a long time for non-urgent appointments.
• The practice had an active patient participation group (PPG).

The areas where the provider must make improvements are:

• Ensure disclosure and barring service (DBS) checks are undertaken for all staff undertaking chaperone duties;
• Ensure a programme where clinical audits are carried out periodically and improvements shown.

In addition the provider should:

• Ensure meetings are documented more fully showing actions taken;
• Ensure that significant events and incidents are discussed and learning disseminated through the practice.
• Produce a practice risk register to log both clinical and non-clinical risks to the practice and the patient population.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP 

Chief Inspector of General Practice