South Westminster Centre for Health Also known as South Westminster 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 the service involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect. This is the first inspection for this service since its registration with CQC. This key question has been rated as Good.

This service scored 75 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The service treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity.

Arrangements were in place to promote people’s privacy. Patient feedback showed that people were satisfied with their experience of HCL’s services. We observed people being treated with kindness during our assessment.
 

The service treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They took account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

People’s personal, cultural, social, religious and equality characteristics were considered. People’s 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.

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 any discomfort, concern or distress. Quiet space could be found for a person if they needed this (for example, for feeding a baby) while waiting for their appointment.

There was a system for appointment triage to ensure that only people with appropriate problems were referred to the additional and extended primary care access services. Clinicians working in these services consistently told us that the triage system generally worked well. There were processes in place should referral back to the person’s own GP or emergency support be required.
 

The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff and supported staff to deliver person-centred care.

Staff told us they felt valued by leaders. Leaders had taken steps to recognise and meet the wellbeing needs of staff, which included the necessary resources and facilities for safe working, such as breaks, catch-up slots and rest areas. The diagnostic clinics provided learning opportunities for GPs with specific special interests. HCL had also invested in a training initiative using the ‘Just Listening’ model to promote active listening skills. The aim was to improve people’s experience of interactions, health outcomes and workforce enablement and job satisfaction. We spoke with one of the lead GPs for this initiative who told us the approach had transformed their own experience of consultations although we did not see evidence of wider evaluation results to date. This work was part of HCL’s community-led programme to tackle inequalities in health in Westminster.