Sidcup Medical Centre

Updated 12 January 2024

Sidcup Medical Centre operates across four sites:

Church Avenue Surgery, 2 Church Avenue, Sidcup, Kent

Burnt Oak Lane Surgery, 231 Burnt Oak Lane, Sidcup, Kent

Thanet Road Surgery, 63 Thanet Road, Bexley, Kent

Crook Log Surgery, 19 Crook Log, Bexleyheath, Kent

The provider is registered with CQC to deliver the Regulated Activities: diagnostic and screening procedures, maternity and midwifery services and treatment of disease, disorder or injury and surgical procedure.

The practice is situated within the NHS South East London Integrated Care Board (ICB) and delivers Personal Medical Services (PMS) to a patient population of over 20,000. This is part of a contract held with NHS England.

The practice is part of a wider network of GP practices.

Information published by Office for Health Improvement and Disparities shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the seventh decile (7 of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others.

According to the latest available data, the ethnic make-up of the practice area is 5% Asian, 89% White, 3% Black, 2% Mixed, and 1% Other.

The practice is open between 8 am to 6.30 pm Monday to Friday and 9 am to 5 pm on a Saturday. The practice offers a range of appointment types including book on the day, telephone consultations and advance appointments.

Extended access is provided locally by the primary care network, where late evening and weekend appointments are available. Out of hours services are provided by 111.

Updated 12 January 2024

We carried out an announced assessment of Sidcup Medical Centre on 11 December 2023. The assessment focused on the responsive key question.

Following our previous inspection on 6 July 2021 the practice was rated requires improvement for the responsive key question and good overall. The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Sidcup Medical Centre on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

The practice continues to be rated as good overall as this was the rating given at the last comprehensive inspection. However, we have now rated the responsive key question as requires improvement as a result of the findings of this focused assessment.

Safe - Good

Effective – Good

Caring – Good

Responsive – Requires improvement

Well-led - Good

Why we carried out this assessment

We carried out this assessment as part of our work to understand how practices are working to try to meet demand for access and to better understand the experiences of people who use services and providers. We recognise the work that GP practices have been engaged in to continue to provide safe, quality care to the people they serve. We know colleagues are doing this while demand for general practice remains exceptionally high, with more appointments being provided than ever. In this challenging context, access to general practice remains a concern for people. Our strategy makes a commitment to deliver regulation driven by people’s needs and experiences of care. These assessments of the responsive key question include looking at what practices are doing innovatively to improve patient access to primary care and sharing this information to drive improvement.

How we carried out the assessment

This assessment was carried out remotely. It did not include a site visit.

The process included:

• Conducting an interview with the provider and members of staff using video conferencing.
• Reviewing patient feedback from a range of sources
• Requesting evidence from the provider
• Reviewing data we hold about the service
• Seeking information/feedback from relevant stakeholders

Our findings

We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:

• what we found when we inspected
• information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
• information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

We found that:

• According to the National GP Patient Survey results the practice had continued to perform below national ‘access’ averages for questions about patient experience of getting through to the practice by phone, their experience of making an appointment, satisfaction with appointment times, and satisfaction with the appointments they were offered.

• During the assessment process, the provider highlighted the efforts they are making or are planning to make to improve the responsiveness of the service for their patient population. The effect of these efforts are not yet reflected in patient feedback.

Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider should:

• Continue to identify ways of improving patient satisfaction in relation to phone access and appointments.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care