Amwell Surgery

Updated 12 January 2024

Amwell Surgery provides a range of primary medical services to the local population from its premises at Medical Centre, Fawkon Walk, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, EN11 8FG.

The provider is registered with CQC to deliver five Regulated Activities; diagnostic and screening procedures, maternity and midwifery services, family planning, surgical procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

Services are provided on a General Medical Services (GMS) contract (a nationally agreed contract) to approximately 13,800 patients.

The practice has one registered manager in place. (A registered manager is an individual registered with CQC to manage the regulated activities provided). The practices clinical team consists of 4 GP partners. There are three salaried GPs, an Advanced Nurse practitioner, a Nurse Practitioner, two Practice Nurses, and two Healthcare Assistants. They are supported by a team of reception and administrative staff as well as a practice manager, admin manager and finance manager.

The practice population is predominantly white British and has a black and minority ethnic population of approximately 4.4%. Information published by Public Health England, rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as 7, on a scale of one to 10. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level 10 the lowest.

The Out of Hours service is provided by Herts Urgent Care and can be accessed via the NHS 111 service.

Updated 12 January 2024

We carried out an announced focused inspection at Amwell Surgery on 14 December 2023. The rating for the responsive key question is Good. As the other domains were not reviewed during this assessment, the rating of good will be carried forward from the previous inspection and the overall rating of the service will remain Good.

Safe - Good

Effective - Good

Caring – Good

Responsive – Good

Well-led - Good

Following our previous comprehensive inspection on 20 November 2019 the practice was rated good overall and for all key questions.

The full reports for previous inspections can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Amwell Surgery on our website at www.cqc.org.uk

Why we carried out this inspection

We carried out this assessment as part of our work to understand how practices are working to try to meet peoples demands for access and to better understand the experiences of people who use services and providers.

We recognise the work that GP practices have been engaged in to continue to provide safe, high-quality care to the people they serve. We know staff are carrying this out whilst the demand for general practice remains exceptionally high, with more appointments being provided than ever. However, this challenging context, access to general practice remains a concern for people.

Our strategy makes a commitment to deliver regulation driven by people’s needs and experiences of care. These assessments of the responsive key question include looking at what practices are doing innovatively to improve patient access to primary care and sharing this information to drive improvement.

How we carried out the inspection

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site.

This assessment was carried out remotely. It did not include a site visit.

The process included:

• Conducting an interview with the provider and members of staff using video conferencing.
• Reviewing patient feedback from a range of sources
• Requesting evidence from the provider.
• Reviewing data we hold about the provider.
• Seeking information/feedback from relevant stakeholders

Our findings

We based our judgement of the quality of care at this service on a combination of:

• what we found when we inspected
• information from our ongoing monitoring of data about services and
• information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

We found that:

• Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way and the provider had implanted systems and processes as a result of patient feedback.
• National GP patient survey results relating to access were above national averages.
• Complaints were satisfactorily handled in a timely way.

Details of our findings and the evidence supporting our ratings are set out in the evidence tables.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care