The Walcote Practice

Updated 23 December 2021

This service operates from one location; The Walcote Practice, Southgate Chambers, 37-39 Southgate Street, Winchester, Hampshire SO23 9EH.

The Walcote Practice provides private GP services to self-funded and privately insured patients who are also registered with an NHS GP. Services include, but are not limited to; wellness screening and health checks, sexual health checks, and diagnosis and treatment of long term conditions. The service also provides minor surgery, the fitting of contraceptive implants, joint injections, travel services and vaccines, COVID-19 PCR testing and mother and baby checks. The Walcote Practice offers services to both adults and children. Patients pay the Walcote Practice per consultation. Patients are able to book appointments at a time to suit them and with a doctor of their choice. GPs conduct face to face, video and telephone consultations with patients and, where appropriate, issue prescriptions or make referrals to specialists.

The service is open from 8.30am until 6pm Monday to Friday. At the time of the inspection consultations were available until 5pm as a temporary measure, until the new assistant practice manager begins in role in December 2021. It will offer a late night session until 6.30 on Tuesdays when the new assistant practice manager starts and it is open from 9am until 12.30pm every Saturday.

The service is registered to provide the following regulated activities: treatment of disease, disorder or injury, family planning, maternity and midwifery services, surgical procedures and diagnostic and screening procedures.

The service employs one full-time GP and two part-time GPs, a business manager, a practice manager, a senior practice administrator and a Saturday morning receptionist. The practice is supported by four reception staff who are employed by an independent company, with which the practice has a service agreement. The reception staff provide reception and administration support to the service and other companies which operate from the same premises.

www.thewalcotepractice.co.uk

How we inspected this service

For this inspection, the GP specialist advisor held a remote interview with the registered manager, who is also the medical director, in advance of the onsite visit. We gathered and reviewed information before and during the inspection and spoke with staff when we visited the service.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 23 December 2021

This service is rated as Good overall. (Previous inspection October 2019, rated Good)

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? – Good

We carried out an announced inspection at The Walcote Practice as part of our inspection programme.

The Walcote Practice provides private GP services to self-funded and privately insured patients who are also registered with an NHS GP. Services include, but are not limited to; wellness screening and health checks, sexual health checks and diagnosis and treatment of long term conditions. The service also provides minor surgery, the fitting of contraceptive implants, mother and baby checks, joint injections, COVID-19 PCR testing, travel services and vaccines.

The service has a 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.

Our key findings were:

• The service continued to provide good quality care that was patient focused and met patients’ changing needs.
• It had addressed suggestions made at the previous inspection.
• The service made improvements following incidents and complaints, and demonstrated an effective governance framework.
• It has invested in additional services during the COVID-19 pandemic to support patients who might be vulnerable.
• The provider had implemented safe systems for infection prevention and control as well as safeguarding vulnerable adults and children.
• The provider had maintained an audit programme during the COVID-19 pandemic and monitored prescribing and patient feedback.
• The Walcote Practice provided staff with access to a suite of online training and required staff to keep up to date with role-specific courses.
• Patient satisfaction was high and the website was clear and informative.

We saw the following outstanding practice:

• The Walcote Practice quickly responded to the COVID-19 pandemic to support patient safety. As well as adapting to offer remote services, it continued to offer face to face appointments and home visits. It invested in pulse oximeters (to measure oxygen levels in blood) and gave these to patients who might be at risk of hospitalisation from COVID-19 and set up systems for patients to share their daily oxygen levels. They also provided oxygen concentrators to help patients stay safe in their own homes for as long as possible.

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