Brent GP Access Centre Also known as Wembley Centre for Health & Care

This service is rated as Good overall.

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? – Requires improvement

We carried out an announced, comprehensive inspection of the Brent GP Extended Access Service on 18, 19 and 22 July 2019. This was the first inspection of the provider’s extended hours service.

Our inspection included visits to the five locations (hubs) in Brent where the service operates. The service provides extended access appointments for patients of all practices within the Brent clinical commissioning group (CCG). The Wembley hub is open 8am to 8pm, seven days a week. The other  sites are open during weekday evenings and on weekends. GP appointments are available at every site. Nurse appointments are also available at the Wembley hub.

One of the provider’s clinical directors is the registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

As part of our inspection, 33 people provided feedback about the service at the Wembley hub. All of them were positive about the service. Patients frequently described the service as excellent and said they valued being able to access the service quickly when they needed it. Patients also commented on the efficiency of the appointment system and praised the GPs and nurses for their professionalism and caring manner.

Our key findings were:

• The service had systems to manage most risks so that safety incidents were less likely to happen.
• When incidents occurred, there were systems in place to learn from them and improve.
• Care and treatment were delivered according to evidence-based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients were able to access care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• Patient feedback about the service was consistently positive.
• Practice and patient needs were used to inform service development and improvements.
• The provider monitored its activity and there was also some focus on quality improvement.
• Managerial oversight arrangements were not always clearly documented however, and we found different practices in place at different hubs without a clear rationale.
• There was scope to improve the feedback mechanisms with the GPs and nurses on the rota pool.

The areas where the provider must make improvements as they are in breach of regulations are:

• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.

(Please see the specific details on action required at the end of this report).

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The provider should review the information it provides to new and temporary clinicians to ensure they have the information they need to provide the service effectively and efficiently
• The provider should ensure that all sites are aware of available facilities to support patient access including translation services.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGPChief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care