Archived: Dr Michael Mitchell

Updated 11 July 2019

Dr Michael Mitchell is an independent provider of general medical services and treats both adults and children from a location in Northwood in the London borough of Hillingdon. The registered provider is Dr Michael Mitchell, a single-handed doctor, who is supported by two reception staff. Registered providers have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

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

Services are available to any fee-paying patient and include long-term condition management, travel vaccinations, childhood immunisations, health screening, sexual health services, end of life care, substance misuse, cryotherapy and wound management.

Appointments are available weekdays from 8am to 12pm which includes a walk-in service. For out of hours care the provider has an agreement with a private locum agency. Alternatively, patients are signposted to the local urgent care centre. The doctor has a patient list size of over 1,000 patients and provides an average of four consultations a day.

The service operates from the first floor of a converted residential building with a private dentist being located on the ground floor. There are no lifts and so persons requiring additional access support are directed at the time of booking to NHS providers or they might, on occasions, be seen at home. There is one clinical consultation room, storage areas and a reception/waiting area.

Twenty four people completed CQC comment cards to provide feedback about the service. All 24 people were wholly positive about the care that they had received.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 11 July 2019

This service is rated as Good overall.

This service has been inspected twice previously, but not rated. Those reports can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Dr Michael Mitchell on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of Dr Michael Mitchell on 10 May 2019 as part of our inspection programme. Our inspection team was led by a CQC lead inspector and included a GP specialist adviser.

At this inspection we found:

• The service had good systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When safety incidents did happen, the service learned from them and improved their processes.
• The service routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence-based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Services were provided to meet the needs of patients.
• Patients were able to access care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• Patient feedback was consistently positive.
• There were clear responsibilities, roles and systems of accountability to support good governance and management.
• Quality improvement activity that had been initiated following previous inspections was seen to be continuing, and there was now a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care