Eastern Avenue Medical Centre

Updated 16 May 2022

Eastern Avenue Medical Centre is located at:

737a Cranbrook Road

Ilford

Essex

IG2 6RJ

and provides GP services under a Personal Medical Services contract. This is a contract between the GP practice and NHS England to deliver local services.

The practice is registered with the CQC to carry out the regulated activities of:

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

The practice is located in a shared two-storey portacabin that has parking available behind the building. There is step-free access from the street to the waiting areas and two clinical rooms.

Eastern Avenue Medical Centre is commissioned by Redbridge Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and has a practice list of approximately 6580 registered patients. The practice is in the third least deprived group out of 10 on the national deprivation scale.

The practice staff includes three GP partners and one locum GP collectively working 22 weekly sessions. The nursing team consists of temporary practice nurse who provides three sessions weekly. The practice also employs a clinical pharmacist who works two sessions per week. The clinical team is supported by a practice and a reception manager and a team of administrative/reception staff.

The practice’s opening times are Monday, Tuesday and Friday from 8am to 7:30pm and Wednesday and Thursday from 8am to 6.30pm. The practice offered a range of appointments including telephone, video and face-to-face.

The out of hours service is provided by the NHS 111 service and patients can also access appointments with the GP out of hours hub services should they have difficulty obtaining appointments with their own GP practice.

Updated 16 May 2022

We carried out an announced inspection at Eastern Avenue Medical Centre on 6th April 2022. Overall, the practice is rated as Good.

The ratings for each key question are as follows:-

Safe - Good

Effective - Good

Caring - Good

Responsive - Good

Well-led - Good

Following our previous inspection on the 9 and 10 November 2020, the practice was rated Requires Improvement overall and for all key questions except caring which was rated Good.

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

Why we carried out this inspection

This inspection was a comprehensive inspection to follow up on:

• Breaches of regulations or ‘shoulds’ identified at our previous inspection held November 2020.

How we carried out the inspection

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 inspections differently.

This inspection 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

• Conducting staff interviews using teleconferencing
• Completing clinical searches on the practice’s patient records system and discussing findings with the provider
• Reviewing patient records to identify issues and clarify actions taken by the provider
• Requesting evidence from the provider
• A short site visit

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 have rated this practice as Good overall

We found that:

• The practice provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The practice adjusted how it delivered services to meet the needs of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way.
• The way the practice was managed promoted the delivery of quality, person-centre care.

Whilst we found no breaches of regulations, the provider(s) should:

• Develop a system to record ad-hoc clinical discussions held with practice nurse and clinical pharmacist as part of their clinical supervision.
• Maintain a consistent approach to monitoring patients coded on clinical system with pre-diabetes.
• Continue with efforts to improve the uptake of childhood immunisations.

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