Private Walk-In Clinic

Updated 7 February 2023

Private Walk-In Clinic is a private GP service founded in October 2016. The service is located in Shepherds Bush, South West London which is within the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The service is registered with CQC under its provider organisation SomDoc Walk-In Clinic Limited.

The service is registered to provide the registered activity of Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The service provides primary medical services to fee-paying patients. The service is primarily aimed at the Somali community across all London Boroughs. Services include GP consultations, diagnostic tests, health screening, well person health checks, travel vaccines and advice.

The service is open from 9.00am to 6.00pm seven days a week. Advance or on the day appointments can be booked in person, by telephone or on-line. It is not required to offer an out of hours service. Patients who need medical assistance outside operating hours are signposted to seek assistance from alternative services such as the NHS 111 telephone service or accident and emergency facilities. This information is on the front door of the service and on it’s website.

How we inspected this service

Before visiting, we looked at a range of information that we hold about the service and held by stakeholders. We reviewed information submitted by the service in response to our provider information request.

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 7 February 2023

This service is rated as Good overall. (The service was previously inspected in June 2018, when it was meeting the then current standard)

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 comprehensive inspection at Private Walk-In as part of our inspection programme.

The service provided access to private GP services and was primarily aimed at the Somali community within the UK.

A GP partner 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.

Our key findings were:

• In response to issues identified at our last inspection, the service had:
  • Reviewed its process for documenting actions taken following receipt of safety alerts
  • Introduced regular legionella testing of its water system.
  • Introduced a system to record the immunity and vaccination history of all staff.
  • Installed a hearing loop for the benefit of patients with impaired hearing
  • Implemented changes to assist patients in locating alternative sources of treatment when the service was closed.
• Staff understood their responsibilities to manage emergencies and to recognise those in need of urgent medical attention.
• There were arrangements for planning and monitoring the number and mix of staff needed.
• The service acted on and learned from external safety events as well as patient and medicine safety alerts.
• Where appropriate, staff gave people advice so they could self-care.
• Staff understood patients’ personal, cultural, social and religious needs.
• The service had complaint policy and procedures in place.
• Leaders were knowledgeable about issues and priorities relating to the quality and future of services.

The area where the provider should make improvements is:

• Consider the purchase of a ramp to enable wheelchair users to access all patient use rooms.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

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