Queen Elizabeth Hospital Urgent Care Centre

Updated 27 January 2023

Queen Elizabeth Hospital Urgent Care Centre is a registered location that consists of four urgent treatment centres (UTC) at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Kings College Hospital, Princess Royal University Hospital and Beckenham Beacon community health centre. The service provides urgent and emergency care for patients across a number of boroughs in South and South East London

The service utilises a hub and spoke approach. The main location is at Queen Elizabeth hospital, Stadium Road, Woolwich, SW18 4QH. This service, further to the urgent treatment centre, also provides a home visiting out of hours service for the Greenwich area, which operates from 6:30pm until 8am on weekdays and 24 hours a day at weekends. The first of three satellites is Beckenham Beacon UTC, 379-397 Croydon Rd, Beckenham BR3 3QL. The second satellite site is Princess Royal University Hospital UTC, Farnborough Common, Orpington, Kent, BR6 8ND. The third satellite site is Kings College University Hospital UTC, Denmark Hill, London, SE5 9RS.

All four services provide treatment of minor injuries and illnesses, and provide a streaming service in order that patients are transferred to the right service either within the UTC or elsewhere. At all sites except Beckenham Beacon, the streaming service is also the first point of contact for patients attending the emergency department of the respective hospitals which are co-located with the urgent treatment centre. Beckenham Beacon UTC does not have an emergency department. At present, the Kings College Hospital UTC does not see paediatric patients, who are taken directly to the paediatrics or emergency departments instead, although this is likely to change in the future.

The service is delivered by Greenbrook Healthcare (Hounslow) Ltd (Greenbrook). Greenbrook is a wholly owned subsidiary of Totally PLC, and currently manages 10 Urgent Care Centres in North West London, South East London and Watford. The organisation also manages another Urgent Treatment Centre on behalf of Vocare, which is another wholly owned subsidiary of Totally PLC.

The urgent treatment centres with the exception of the Beckenham Beacon UTC are a 24/7 NHS service for patients who walk-in, or are referred by the NHS 111 service. Greenbrook provides doctors, nurses and streaming staff to the service, as well as administrative staff. Streaming staff consist mostly of advanced and emergency nurse practitioners. Some of the staff who work at the service are employed directly by Greenbrook. However, most of the clinical staff and some of the administrative staff at the service are either bank staff (those who are retained on a list by the provider) or agency staff.

The service at Beckenham Beacon UTC is open from 8am until 8pm, seven days per week. The combined service sees approximately 7,000 patients a week in the UTCs, with a further 20 patients per week seen by the home visiting service.

CQC registered the provider to carry out the following regulated services at the service:

• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury
• Diagnostic and screening procedures
• Transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely

The service’s website address is http://www.greenbrook.nhs.uk.

Updated 27 January 2023

This practice is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Requires improvement

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of Queen Elizabeth Hospital Urgent Care Centre on 6, 7, 8 and 9 December 2022. The service had previously been inspected in January 2017 where it had been rated as good overall, and in all five key questions.

The registered manager is the Head of Quality and Governance at the location. 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 had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the practice learned from them and improved their processes.
• The service was not meeting targets for the time in which patients were clinically assessed as required by its commissioners, and standards set by NHS England. The targets were not being met at any of the four sites, and were particularly outlying at Princess Royal University Hospital Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) and Kings College Hospital UTC.
• The service routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence-based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients found the service easy to access and reported that they were able to access care when they needed it. However, the service was not ensuring a throughput of patients in line with its four-hour target.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.

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

• Ensure that care and treatment is provided in a safe way to patients.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Improve throughput times such that it meets targets for discharging patients in four hours.
• Review systems for monitoring prescription stationery.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services