Harewood Medical Practice

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

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.

At our last assessment, we rated this key question as good. At this assessment, the rating remains the same.

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.

Harewood Medical Practice made sure people’s care and treatment was effective by assessing and reviewing their health, care, wellbeing, and communication needs with them.

Feedback from people using the practice was mostly positive. People felt involved in any assessment of their needs and felt confident that staff understood their individual and cultural needs.

Staff were aware of the needs of the local community and used digital flags within the care records system to highlight any specific individual needs. Staff checked people’s health, care, and wellbeing needs during health reviews.

Clinical staff used templates when conducting care reviews to support the review of people’s wider health and wellbeing. The practice also had effective systems in place to identify people with previously undiagnosed conditions.

Staff could refer people with social needs, such as those experiencing social isolation or housing difficulties, to a social prescriber and two examples of this working well were provided by the practice.

In the first instance, a member of the clinical team had referred a patient for support with their finances and the social prescribing team was able to assist them in obtaining eligible funding thereby alleviating their financial worries.

In the second case, a member of the clinical team had referred a patient with anxiety who needed to explore social contact opportunities and the social prescribing team assisted them to get support for their mental health and signposted to a local reading group to provide social connection and promote meaningful activity.

Harewood Medical Practice planned and delivered people’s care and treatment with them, including what was important and mattered to them. It did this in line with legislation and current evidence-based good practice and standards.

Systems were in place to ensure staff were up to date with evidence-based guidance and legislation.

As part of our assessment, a series of patient clinical records searches were completed by a CQC GP specialist advisor. The search criteria used is freely available for practices to access at any time. The records of patients with long-term conditions were reviewed to ensure that the required monitoring was taking place.

Searches of clinical records for high-risk groups (including asthma, chronic kidney disease, hypothyroidism, and diabetes) found no major monitoring concerns.

Although one patient with hypothyroidism was identified as not having had a recent blood test, this was immediately addressed by the practice when it was highlighted to them.

The National GP Patient Survey results showed that 93% of patients felt that the healthcare professional they saw had all the information they needed about them during their last GP appointment. This was slightly above the local and national averages of 92%.

The practice was actively promoting Jess’s Rule on a noticeboard in reception. This is a primary healthcare initiative to encourage GP teams to rethink a diagnosis if a patient presents three times with the same symptoms or concerns, particularly if symptoms unexpectedly persist, escalate, or remain unexplained. It is led by the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England and is supported by the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Harewood Medical Practice worked well across teams and services to support people. It made sure patients only needed to tell their story once by sharing thorough assessments of people’s needs when people moved between different services.

Staff had access to the information they needed to appropriately assess, plan, and deliver people’s care, treatment, and support. The practice worked with other services to ensure continuity of care, including where clinical tasks were delegated to other services.

Leaders and staff were working with their local primary care network (PCN) to meet the needs of the patient population. For example, in preparation for the move to the new Catterick Integrated Care Centre, engagement events had taken place with secondary care colleagues, midwives, health visitors, podiatry, speech and language therapists, and community dental, mental health, oncology and sexual health services with the aim of improving access for the practice population.

Harewood Medical Practice supported people to manage their health and wellbeing to maximise their independence, choice, and control. They also supported people to live healthier lives and where possible, reduce their future needs for care and support.

Staff focussed on identifying risks to patients’ health, including those in the last 12 months of their lives, patients at risk of developing a long-term condition and those with caring responsibilities.

Staff supported national priorities and initiatives to improve population health (such as stopping smoking and tackling obesity).

Our clinical searches showed that 64 patients had had a medication review within the past three months. Five of these were looked at in more detail and overall, the quality of the reviews was good.

Harewood Medical Practice generally monitored people’s care and treatment well in order to continuously improve it, however some areas for improvement were noted during our assessment.

For example, as part of our series of patient clinical record searches, we identified 12 patients prescribed medication to lower blood pressure and reduce heart failure and hypertension who had potentially not had the required monitoring. When 5 of these patients’ records were looked at in more detail, it was identified that 4 of them were not on appropriate recall for blood tests and consequently the practice was asked to review the patients that we had identified. The practice immediately did this and took the required action.

In addition, although the practice met the national target of 80% for screening of cervical cancer in 50 to 64-year-old women, it was noted to be just below target for the 25 to 49-year-old age group at 78%.

They were also slightly below the 90% minimum target for 2 of the 5 childhood immunisations - 88.5% for the PCV booster (a vaccine to protect against serious illnesses like pneumonia and meningitis) and 87.9% for the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine.

The data for cervical screening and childhood immunisations, should be considered within the context of the patient population however and, as this is predominantly military families who move on average every 2 years, keeping up with childhood vaccination programmes and cervical cytology was a challenge for the practice.

In 2024 and 2025 (the period in which the above data was collected), the practice had also registered 375 new patients as part of a government scheme to rehome Afghan refugees, 75% of whom were women and children. Many of these refuges had arrived with no vaccination history or experience of cervical screening and consequently the practice had had to ensure that each one of them had a management plan in place for vaccinations, smears, and other national screening programmes, including tuberculosis.

The practice was noted to have previously met the minimum target for all childhood immunisations in the period 2021 – 2024 and during our assessment we saw that they were actively monitoring and promoting childhood immunisations and the national cervical screening programme. We also saw that they had strategies in place to encourage patients to participate. This included working on recalls, maintaining a register of families who declined their children vaccines and translating information for refugee patients into Pashto, Darsi and Arabic, so that they had informed consent prior to their appointments.

On a positive note, clinical and non-clinical audits were undertaken to improve outcomes for patients with the most recent audits being around medication and pregnancy. These audits had an emphasis on patient education and proactive planning/pregnancy prevention and information had been provided to patients about the risks associated with certain medications, as well as ways to prevent pregnancy while taking them.

Patients with a learning disability were offered an annual health check and local monitoring arrangements for ensuring the checks were offered were in place.

NHS health checks were also offered to patients as part of locally agreed contracts. Unverified data provided by the provider showed that in the last 12 months 569 patients had been invited for an NHS health check and 294 checks had been completed. The practice would follow up on those patients who did not attend their appointments for health checks to ensure they received the necessary care.

From the clinical notes we reviewed, we found that people who used the practice experienced positive outcomes as set out in legislation, standards, and evidence-based clinical guidance.

Harewood Medical Practice told people about their rights around consent and respected these when delivering person-centred care and treatment.

It had a consent policy in place which included clear information for staff about the different forms of consent a patient may give and how a patient may withdraw it at any time. The policy included a section on consent for children and young people and there was a formal consent form attached for patients to complete when having specific procedures, such as minor surgery.

A recent audit of patients who had received steroid injections noted that there was an effective use of templates to document consent and we saw during our visit that capacity and consent were both appropriately recorded on patient records.

Mental Capacity Act training was mandatory for all staff and everyone had completed it.

Do not attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation (DNACPR) decisions were appropriate and were made in line with relevant legislation. Where individuals lacked the capacity to make decisions, staff engaged those who were important to them to act in their best interests.