- GP practice
Dr Rana Chowdhury
Assessment report published 3 July 2025
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
We carried out an announced assessment at Dr Rana Chowdhury, Oak Lodge, 6 Oak Road, Harold Wood, Romford, RM3 0PT. On the 21, 24 and 25 March 2025 we carried out remote clinical searches of the patient’s records, and on the 26 March and 10 April 2025 we carried out visits to the practice.
The practice is registered for the regulated activities, diagnostic and screening procedures, family planning, maternity and midwifery services and treatment of disease, disorder or injury for approximately 4,717 patients.
We carried out this assessment to follow up the breaches of regulations 12 (Safe care and treatment). This assessment has reviewed the key questions safe, effective and well led, and the quality statement equity in access from the key question responsive.
During the assessment we found: -
Safe
The practice had responded to the previous assessment and put in place an action plan. However, systems for significant events, safeguarding, referrals, safe staffing, storage of prescriptions, risk management, medicines optimisation and storage were either not fully effective or embedded.
Effective
The practice had responded to the previous assessment and put in place an action plan, however the systems for assessing needs, delivering evidenced based guidelines and the management of patient long term health conditions remained either not fully effective or embedded.
Responsive
Although patients were mostly satisfied with the access to appointments, the practice had yet to fully implement the access to online appointments. In addition, there was no guidance for reception staff to follow regarding the triage of patients to the appropriate appointments.
Well led
Following the previous assessment in August 2024 the provider had undertaken training and external peer review and implemented an action plan to enable them to improve their capabilities as a leader. However, this assessment found that the leadership of the practice had not made all the necessary improvements or embedded the governance changes. This meant that the leadership of the practice could not demonstrate their capability to deliver consistently high-quality care and treatment. Examples of the systems which were not fully effective were referrals, significant events, safeguarding, staff training, supervision, workflow, prescriptions storage, prescribing of antibiotics, and the recall of patients for long-term health conditions.
We have found breaches of regulation 17 good governance. We have asked the provider to make improvements to the concerns found at this assessment.
The service will remain in special measures. Services placed in special measures will be inspected again within six months. If insufficient improvements have been made such that there remains a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedure to begin the process of preventing the provider from operating the service.
People's experience of this service
The national GP patient survey carried out from January to March 2024 had 90 responses which were positive; for example, over 90% stated they had a fairly or very good experience of the practice, the healthcare professional was good at treating the patient with care and concern and they had confidence and trust in the healthcare professional they saw or spoke with, which were all above the national averages. In response to access to the practice, 84% of patients had a fairly to very good experience of contacting the practice, 95% found the reception staff fairly to very helpful. Twenty three percent of patients found contact through the website fairly to very easy and 80% of patients found it fairly to very easy to contact the practice by phone.
The practice had carried out their own survey in 2024, where 569 patients had responded and 89% found it very or fairly easy to get through to the surgery. 74% of patients were satisfied with the appointment times and 77% answered they were able to get an appointment when they needed. We spoke with a member of the local patient participation group who told us the leaders listened and responded to their views about the practice and staff were approachable and helpful.