We carried out a review of the data available to us about Victoria Medical Centre on 6 July 2023. We have not found evidence that we need to carry out an inspection or reassess our rating at this stage.
This could change at any time if we receive new information. We will continue to monitor data about this service.
If you have concerns about Victoria Medical Centre, you can give feedback on this service.
This practice is rated as Good overall. (Previous inspection December 2014 – Outstanding)
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? - Outstanding
As part of our inspection process, we also look at the quality of care for specific population groups. The population groups are rated as:
Older People – Outstanding
People with long-term conditions – Good
Families, children and young people – Good
Working age people (including those recently retired and students – Good
People whose circumstances may make them vulnerable – Good
People experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia) - Good
We carried out an announced comprehensive at Victoria Medical Centre on 14 December 2017 as part of our inspection programme.
At this inspection we found:
The areas where the provider should make improvements are:
Chief Inspector of General Practice
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection on 4 December 2014. Overall the practice is rated as outstanding. Specifically, we found the practice to be outstanding for providing effective and responsive services and for being well-led. It was also rated as outstanding for providing care for older people and working age people (including those recently retired and students).
The practice was rated as good for providing safe and caring services. It was also rated as good for providing care for people with long term conditions; families, children and young people; people whose circumstances make them vulnerable and people experiencing poor mental health. Our key findings across all the areas we inspected were as follows:
We saw several areas of outstanding practice including:
The practice had worked with a Professor from the nearby university to trial an innovative approach to improving the wellbeing of working men in their population to decrease stress and distress by delivering high quality counselling and acupuncture to over 150 male patients over an 18 month period. This work was shortlisted for a BMJ award and is likely to influence local commissioning. Seventy eight percent of the 150 men reports improvement in their wellbeing following the course.
The practice sees more than 350 pregnant women a year and deliver very full antenatal services from an integrated team of GPs, practice nurses and health visitors. This team recognised that many women had not taken folate in early pregnancy and took action to address this and in the process produced a leaflet entitled “Thinking about getting pregnant but not right now. An A-Z of pre-pregnancy care”. This leaflet won a best practise award from the Primary Care Women’s Health Forum. 10,000 copies have been circulated across GP practices and the local hospital and is used throughout Central London CCG practices.
The practice has a PPG with 800-900 members and has a twitter account with around 100 followers. The practice acts on the feedback in a number of ways to improve services to patients. The Patient Participation Group (PPG), facilitated by the practice, arranged for patient learning sessions to be held. These were advertised in the newsletter and in the waiting area. Presentations had been made by guest speakers on coping with stress and managing diabetes. Exercise classes took place at the practice including over 60s sessions on Monday and Friday. A patient at the practice had recently started an evening ‘shape up’ group with the support of the practice. The aim of the group was to help patients manage their weight, improve their health and become more active. The practice had been designed with space for these events, which took place in a large room adjacent to the reception area.
The practice hosts and supports a monthly Memory Café for patients with dementia and their carers and family members. The practice has actively sought feedback from those attending and has been rewarded by very high patient satisfaction reports.
The practice has employed a “Link Worker” for the elderly. This individual identifies and where appropriate visits all over the age of 75 to offer support and information about health and social care support that is available locally and signposts patients to services to prevent falls and receive shingles and flu vaccination programmes.
The continuing development of staff skills and knowledge is recognised as integral to ensuring high quality care. Staff were proactively supported to acquire knowledge and share best practice. Weekly practice meetings included a learning element. Guest speakers and healthcare specialists were invited to talk about their area of expertise. An example of this was a talk by a local ‘youth gang’ outreach worker. The aim of this was to raise awareness of gang culture which existed in the area and how this may affect patients’ health.
The practice had worked with eternal providers to assess the interface between the public and their reception team, the first contact points for patients attending the practice. This project resulted in the practice producing patient group specific packs to help them access not only the practice but all local health services to try and improve the most appropriate use of those services.
Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP)
Chief Inspector of General Practice