Herstmonceux Integrative Health Centre

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

We looked for evidence that staff involved people in decisions about their care and treatment and provided them advice and support. Staff regularly reviewed people’s care and worked with other services to achieve this.

This is the first inspection for this service since its registration with CQC under a new provider in December 2022. This key question has been rated as Good.

This service scored 70 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The practice always treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

Arrangements were in place to promote patient’s privacy. National GP patient survey data reflected people felt listened to and were treated with kindness. Through our ‘Give Feedback on Care’ form, patients told us staff were caring, kind and helpful.

The practice treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met their needs and preferences as much as possible. Because there was no permanent on site female GP, the service was not always able to offer the choice of seeing a female GP for face-to-face appointments. However, the practice employed a female locum GP and provided regular female GP led clinics. There was also the opportunity for a patient to speak remotely to a female GP if preferred. The service took account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

Patients’ personal, cultural, social, religious and equality characteristics needs were understood and met. Patient communication needs were met to enable them to be fully involved in their care.

The service promoted people’s independence, so people knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

Staff helped patients and their carers to access advocacy, social prescribing and community-based services.

The service listened to and understood people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff responded to people’s needs in the moment and acted to minimise discomfort, concern or distress.

Staff we spoke with knew the process for referral to emergency support, including mental health crisis teams. However, triage systems to ensure people with immediate needs had access to services, needed to be strengthened.

The service cared about and promoted the well-being of their staff. However, staff did not always feel supported and enabled to deliver person-centred care on a consistent basis.

Staff told us they were valued by leaders. Leaders had taken steps to recognise and meet the well-being needs of staff. This included having the necessary resources and facilities for safe working, such as regular breaks and rest areas with access to freely provided refreshments. This extended to the provision of a shower for staff to use if required, to support well-being and exercise. However, during assessment staff reported that lack of GP and nursing staff meant they did not always feel supported in their roles and that this affected their ability to deliver care effectively. The practice told us they were aware staff were under pressure and were actively recruiting an additional GP to alleviate this. However further consideration was needed on measures to better support the nursing team.