- GP practice
Cookham Medical Centre
Report from 16 May 2025 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of inspection: 8 July 2025 to 9 July 2025
Cookham Medical Centre is a GP practice located in a village on the north-eastern edge of Berkshire and delivers services to approximately 8,000 patients under a contract held with NHS England. The practice is a GP practice within Frimley Integrated Care Board (ICB).
The National General Practice Profiles states that the practice has a higher than average number of patients over the age of 45 and fewer younger patients under the age of 35. Information published by Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the 10th decile (10 of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others. This inspection 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.
We carried out this inspection to follow up on the breach of regulation identified at our previous inspection in April 2024.
At this inspection we reviewed 2 quality statements as part of safe and well-led key questions and have combined the scores for these areas with scores from the last inspection (April 2024). The overall rating following this inspection remains ‘Good’ and the practice is no longer in breach of regulations. At this inspection we saw, the arrangements to manage medicines and general governance had improved. The practice acted swiftly to respond to the concerns highlighted following the last inspection.
There was a process for monitoring patients’ health in relation to the use of medicines including high risk medicines with appropriate monitoring and clinical review prior to prescribing. Furthermore, patients with long term conditions were effectively monitored at regular intervals in line with national guidance.
Prescription stationery was kept securely, and the use of blank prescriptions monitored in line with national guidance.
The practice held appropriate emergency medicines, risk assessments were in place to determine the range of medicines held, and a system was in place to monitor stock levels and expiry dates.
Staff had the appropriate authorisations to administer medicines, specifically via Patient Specific Directions.
The practice had reviewed the arrangements to govern and manage medicines. This resulted in a series of changes being implemented, and we saw these changes had now been embedded. Staff involved in all elements of medicines management spoke positively and confidently of the changes. We also saw the practice had improved the process to share learning from significant event and incidents had improved.
People's experience of this service
People were positive about the quality of their care and treatment. Recent survey results, including from the National GP Patient Survey and the NHS Friends and Family Test, showed people were satisfied with services. There was an active patient participation group (PPG) who represented the views of people using the service.
People were positive about how they accessed care and treatment and the overall quality of the care they received. Specifically, feedback sourced from the National GP Patient Survey regarding access and patient experience was higher when compared to local and national averages. For example:
78% of respondents found it easy to get through to the practice by telephone. This was higher when compared to the local average (46%) and the national average (50%).
84% of respondents described their overall experience of the practice as good. This was higher when compared to the local average (70%) and the national average (74%).
The practice promoted and monitored patient feedback that was collected via the NHS Friends and Family Test results. We reviewed the most recent responses collected and verified from May 2025 (230 responses), April 2025 (224 responses) and March 2025 (265 responses). Using the combined responses from the last 3 months (719 responses), 687 responses (96%) rated the service received at the practice as either ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’.