Updated 5 March 2024
Civic Medical Centre is a NHS GP practice which provides primary care services to approximately 9,500 patients in Wirral, Merseyside. We carried out an announced assessment of one quality statement, ‘Equity in access’ under the Responsive key question on 13 March 2024. The practice is rated as good overall and the responsive key question continues to be rated as good. We carried out the assessment as part of our work to understand how practices are working to try to meet people’s 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, 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. The assessment of the quality statement equity of access includes looking at what practices are doing innovatively to improve patient access to primary care and sharing this information to drive improvement. We found that the practice had organised services to meet patient’s needs, including those who were most likely to have difficulty accessing care. The practice used feedback from patients and other information to monitor access. The practice had taken action to improve access and this was reflected in the national GP patient survey data or in other sources of patient feedback.