The Palms Medical Centre

Updated 11 July 2022

The Palms Medical centre is located in an area of residential housing in Newbury Park, Ilford, Essex. The practice is in a purpose-built building. There are bays for parking for patients with disabilities at the front of the practice. There are bus stops within 10 -15 minutes’ walk from the practice.

There are approximately 7400 patients registered at the practice. Statistics shows moderate income deprivation among the registered population. Information published by Public Health England rates the level of deprivation within the practice population group as seven on a scale of one to ten. Level one represents the highest levels of deprivation and level ten the lowest. The registered population is slightly higher than the national average for those aged between 24-44.

Patients registered at the practice come from a variety of geographical and ethnic backgrounds including Asian, Western European, Eastern European and Afro Caribbean.

Care and treatment is delivered by two GP partners (female and male) and two salaried GPs (female) who provide 28 sessions weekly. There is one practice nurse (female) and one healthcare assistant (female) who provide approximately 11 sessions weekly. There are eight administrative staff/reception staff who are led by a practice manager.

The practice is open during the following times: -

8:00am – 6;30pm (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday)

The practice offers extended hours surgery on a Tuesday evening between 6:30pm and 8pm.

Patients can book appointments in person, by telephone and online via the practice website.

Patients requiring a GP appointment outside of practice opening hours are advised to contact the NHS GP out of hours service on telephone number 111. The local CCG provides enhanced GP services which allows patients at this practice to see a GP or Nurse at weekends.

The practice has a General Medical Services (GMS) contract and conducts the following regulated activities: -

• Diagnostic and screening procedures
• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury
• Maternity and midwifery services
• Family planning

Redbridge Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is the practice’s commissioning body.

Updated 11 July 2022

We carried out an announced focused review at The Palms Medical Centre on 22 June 2022 Overall, the practice is rated as Good.

Set out the ratings for each key question

Safe - Good

Effective - Good

Caring - Good

Responsive – Requires Improvement

Well-led - Good

We carried out an announced focused inspection at The Palms Medical Centre on 20 April 2021. The overall rating for the practice was good, with the exception of key question responsive which was rated requires improvement.

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

Why we carried out this review

This review was a focused follow-up review of information without undertaking a site visit inspection to follow up on:

• Progress made against ‘the area where the provider should make improvement’ identified in previous inspection

How we carried out the review

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our reviews differently.

This review was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Requesting evidence from the provider

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.
• information from the provider, patients, the public and other organisations.

This practice is rated as Good overall, with key question responsive remaining rated as requires improvement.

We found that:

• The practice provided care in a way that allowed for a range of professional to address patient’s needs.
• Limited improvement in patient satisfaction levels as evidenced in the most recent GP Patient Survey results. The practice results for providing responsive services continued to be significantly below national average scores, in particular with regards to patients’ attempting to access the practice by telephone.
• Feedback left for practice was mixed. Online feedback about the practice was mainly negative.

We found one breach of regulations. The provider must:

• Establish effective care systems and process to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.

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

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care