This practice is rated as good overall.

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

As part of our inspection process, we also look at the quality of care for specific population groups.

The population groups are rated as:

Older People - good

People with long-term conditions – good

Families, children and young people – good

Working age people (including those recently retired and students – good

People whose circumstances may make them vulnerable – good

People experiencing poor mental health (including people with dementia) - good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Thamesmead Health Centre on 21 March 2018 under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was carried out inline with our next phase inspection programme.

At this inspection we found:

• The practice had a vision to deliver high quality care for patients.

• The service had systems and processes in place to ensure that patients were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in decisions about their care and treatment.

• The practice had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the practice learned from them and improved their processes.

• The practice routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence- based guidelines.

• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion,kindness, dignity and respect.

• Patients found the appointment system easy to use and reported that they were able to access care when they needed it. The practice offered a flexible range of appointments and services.

• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.

• There were systems in place to ensure that patients with long-term conditions or who were vulnerable received the treatment and health checks they needed.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Make all appropriate staff aware of the process for recording, resetting and logging fridge temperatures.

• Take steps to increase the annual review rate of patients identified as having a learning disability and review the need to put processes in place to ensure GPs have appropriate involvement in the annual reviews of people with learning disabilities undertaken by the healthcare assistant and pharmacist.

• The practice should formalise the structure of supervision for all employed clinical staff.

• Review the processes in place for cervical screening to increase uptake.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice