Updated 21 June 2017
Royal Free Hospital Urgent Care Centre is commissioned to provide staffing support to two urgent care services, one in the London Borough of Camden and one in the London Borough of Barnet. The service operates from Royal Free Hospital, Pond Street, London, NW3 2QG and Barnet General Hospital, Wellhouse Lane, Barnet, EN5 3DJ. The services are on one level and is accessible to those with poor mobility.
The service is co-located with the accident and emergency departments of both hospitals. The service provided by the Royal Free Hospital Urgent Care Centre is the provision of GP and administrative staff for the service; the overall responsibility for the service including target times is the responsibility of the hospital trust. In this report, any reference to “the hospital trust” refers to Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.
The service is provided by Haverstock Healthcare Limited. They are a co-operative of GP practices in the local area responsible for managing shared services including the urgent care centre. The provider provides centralised governance for its services which are co-ordinated locally by service managers and senior clinicians. However, given that the service being provided by the urgent care centre are to provide staffing only, most of the policies and procedures used by this service are the responsibility of the hospital trust. At both sites the urgent care centre provides triage to the accident and emergency department except where patients arrive with an emergency presentation or in an ambulance. A streaming nurse (employed by the hospital trust) would review all patients and determine whether the patient needed to be seen in the urgent care centre or by the accident and emergency department of the hospital in which the service is based.
On site, the service is led by a service manager, a lead GP and a lead nurse who have oversight of the urgent care centre. The service employs doctors and administrative staff. Nurses and streaming nurses (who triage patients and determine whether the patient needs to be seen by a doctor or a nurse) are employed by the hospital trust. The majority of staff working at the service were either bank staff (those who are retained on a list by the provider and who work across all of their sites) or agency.
The urgent care service is open 24 hours a day. Patients may contact the urgent care service in advance of attendance but dedicated appointment times are not offered.
This service had not previously been inspected by the CQC.