Dr Jinmi & Partners Also known as Houghton Regis Medical Centre

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

This means we looked for evidence the service involved people in their care and treatment, and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

At our last inspection we rated this key question Requires Improvement.At this inspection, the rating has changed to Good.

This is because people using the service felt staff involved them in decisions about their care and treatment and listened to their concerns.

However, the provider should make sure all staff complete training to help them further support autistic people and people with a learning disability and improve awareness about support available for veterans.

Although patients were more positive about feeling staff treated them with kindness, empathy and compassion, the practice should continue to support staff so that all people interacting with the service feel staff are polite and helpful.

This service scored 65 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The provider had taken some actions to help make sure consultations and telephone calls with patients and discussions with other staff could not be overheard. For example, the practice had covered the letterboxes in the doors to doctors’ consultation rooms. However, due to the construction of the building, there was poor soundproofing throughout the building. This meant the provider could not always maintain the privacy and dignity of people using the service because conversations could be overheard.

Feedback from patients was mixed about staff attitude. Some people said they felt staff were polite, kind and that reception and clinical staff always respected their privacy and dignity.

However, other patients told us they felt that particular non-clinical members of staff were unhelpful and rude, although some also told us that they felt the attitude of some staff had got better.

The practice was an accredited ‘Veteran Friendly’ practice, meaning the practice had a dedicated clinician who has specialist knowledge of military-related health conditions and veteran specific health services, to help support serving members of the Armed Forces, ex-service personnel, and their immediate family and carers to access the best possible care and treatment.

However, although the practice asked patients newly registering with the practice if they had served in the Armed Forces and leaders told us the practice offered veterans quicker access to appointments, practice staff did not know what other support was available or which clinicians in the practice had this specialist knowledge.

Since July 2022, there has been a legal requirement for providers to make sure their staff receive training to help them support autistic people and people with a learning disability. The provider’s training record showed that 8 of the 12 members of non-clinical staff who had started suitable training at the time of the last inspection had now completed the training. The records provided also showed that 1 of the 4 members of clinical staff who, at the time of the last inspection had started training, had now completed the training. There were no records showing other staff had started or completed the training since the last inspection.

However, staff described how they individually made reasonable adjustments for patients, such as offering appointments for a child who had autism the last appointment of a clinic so that the environment was calmer and quieter for them.

Staff also told us how they tried to offer appointments later in the day or during the practice’s extended opening hours for a patient who worked some distance away from the practice.

The findings of the 2025 GP Patient Survey showed 90% of the people who responded to the survey said during their last appointment they were involved as much as they wanted to be in decisions about their care and treatment. This was similar to the findings of the 2024 survey and was in line with the national average.

One patient we spoke to told us they felt involved in their care and treatment and were given options for their treatment.

The person who left one of the reviews of the practice on the NHS website commented they felt the GP they saw had explained things clearly to them.

Reception staff could easily see people in the waiting area and could therefore notice and respond if someone became very unwell or distressed.

The practice displayed posters advising patients about the practice’s ‘zero tolerance’ approach in the reception area, the zero tolerance policy was available on the practice’s website and there was a recorded message advising people of the policy when they telephoned the practice.

Generally, staff described good working relationships with other staff and felt able to ask each other for support or advice when it was needed.

The practice celebrated special occasions, such as birthdays, Easter and Christmas, and staff were invited to Christmas meals and other social events.