- GP practice
Essington Medical Centre
Assessment report published 26 June 2026
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of Assessment: 21 May 2026.
Essington Medical Centre is a GP practice and delivers services to approximately 2,972 people under a contract held with NHS England.
According to the latest available data, the ethnic make-up of the service area is approximately 92.7% White, 3.2% Asian, 2.3% Mixed, 1.3% Black and 0.5% Other. Information published by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows deprivation within the service population group is in the 6th decile (6 of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the service population is relative to others.
This was a focused assessment. We undertook this assessment due to the length of time since our last assessment. We assessed 10 quality statements from across all 5 key questions. This assessment considered the demographics of the people using the service, the context the service was working within and how this impacted service delivery. Where relevant, further commentary is provided in the quality statements section of this report.
Staff kept facilities clean and maintained the majority of equipment appropriately to ensure people were kept safe. Systems were in place to assess the risk of inspection. However, on the day of our assessment, action plans to mitigate all of the risks identified were not always in place. In addition, the systems for security and tracking prescription stationery throughout the practice were not effective. Following our assessment, the provider sent evidence to support appropriate action had been taken to mitigate the risks. There were enough staff with the right skills, qualifications and experience.
Staff supported people to live healthier lives, monitoring their care and treatment to ensure they received positive and consistent outcomes.
Staff treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion, and respected their privacy and dignity.
People could access care, treatment and support when they needed it. Leaders and staff were alert to discrimination and inequality that could disadvantage groups of people who used the service and sought ways to address any barriers.
The service had a clear vision and strategy, which considered the needs of the people who used their service and the wider community. Staff understood their individual roles and responsibilities. Leaders accounted for the actions, behaviours and performance of staff through clear and effective governance processes.
People's experience of this service
As part of our assessment, we reviewed feedback from people who used the service to understand their views and experience of the service. This included speaking with people using the service at the time of our assessment and reviewing other feedback available to us. People were positive about the quality of their care and treatment. They described how staff treated them with kindness and delivered patient-centred care. This was mirrored in the results of recent surveys, including the 2025 National GP Patient Survey, which showed most people were satisfied. For example, 78% of respondents were positive about their overall experience of the GP practice, in line with the national average of 75%.
Feedback from people collected through the Friends and Family test was generally positive. People described staff as kind, polite, friendly and helpful. The majority of comments about access were positive and indicated people were seen promptly when they requested an appointment. However, there were a small number of negative comments which indicated appointments ran late and people were left waiting with no explanation and appointments cancelled at the last minute.
The service did not have an active patient participation group (PPG) to represent the voice of people using the service but were actively taking steps to re-establish a PPG to help improve service delivery.