Archived: The Northwood Surgery

Updated 18 July 2019

The Northwood Surgery is a small private GP clinic located in Northwood Hills in the London Borough of Hillingdon. The clinic offers a full range of services including long-term condition management, blood tests, child immunisations, sexual health and cervical screening.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. For example, aesthetics/ non-surgical beauty treatments and medical acupuncture do not fall within the regulated activities for which the location is registered with CQC.

The service is registered with the CQC for the regulated activities; Diagnostic and Screening Procedures and Treatment of Disease, Disorder or Injury.

The clinical team consists of a female lead clinician and a male clinician who are supported by a team of three part-time reception/administration staff.

There is also a small number of specialist doctors who rent rooms from the provider and work under practising privileges (the granting of practising privileges is a well-established process within independent healthcare whereby a medical practitioner is granted permission to work in an independent hospital or clinic, in independent private practice, or within the provision of community services).

The service is open 9am to 5pm Monday to Wednesday, 9am to 12pm Thursday and Saturday and 9am to 3pm Friday. Appointments are available with the female clinician Tuesday and Wednesday 9am to 5pm, Thursday 9am to 3pm and Thursday 9am to 12pm. Appointments are available with the male clinician Monday 9-5pm. The service does not provide home visits. Patients are signposted to local out of hours providers when the service is closed.

The practice has approximately 270 registered patients who actively use the service and the clinicians provide up to 50 consultations a month.

The providers website can be found at; www.northwoodsurgery.co.uk

How we inspected this service

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.

Our inspection team was led by a CQC lead inspector. The team included a CQC specialist adviser.

Updated 18 July 2019

This service is rated as Good overall.

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 at The Northwood Surgery as part of our inspection programme.

The surgery provides a private GP consultation service to adults and children.

The lead clinician is the registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

Thirty-two people provided feedback about the service by completing CQC comment cards. The feedback was consistently positive about the staff and the service provided. People reported that the surgery provided a friendly, professional and caring service.

Our key findings were:

• Feedback from people who had used the service was very positive with high praise for the service and staff.
• Effective safety systems and processes were in place.
• Clinicians provided care and treatment in line with current evidence-based guidance and adherence to the guidance was monitored.
• Staff were appropriately trained to carry out their roles.
• Feedback from people who had used the service was positive in relation to the caring and responsive aspects of the service.
• The premises were suitable for the services delivered.
• Effective systems were in place to support good governance.
• There was a clear vision and strategy to deliver high quality care.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Review safeguarding training requirements for non-clinical staff to ensure that it is in line with intercollegiate guidance.
• Continue to develop quality improvement activity.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGPChief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care