The Care Group is proud to achieve this rating from the CQC, following the inspections on 28 September and 2 October 2023, as it is a clear reflection of the commitment and hard work of our workforce and partners to ensure patients get the very best care when they use our services.
Both the Urgent Treatment Centre and GP Out of Hours services are based in the heart of the community, at Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and are accessible by calling NHS 111. The UTC service supports our residents with non-life-threatening conditions, and it’s equipped to diagnose and deal with many of the most common ailments people attend A&E for. Our GP Out of Hours service provides access to a GP to help people deal with any urgent medical conditions that cannot wait until their usual GP surgery reopens.
The services are rated as GOOD overall
Are services effective? – Good
Are services caring? – Good
Are services responsive? – Good
Are services well-led? – Good
Are services safe? – Requires improvement
Some headline comments from the CQC inspection report included:
“The service had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the service learned from them and improved their processes.”
“Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.”
We are aware of and have been working to rectify the reasons why we were graded as “Requires improvement” in the “Are services safe?” category. It’s important to recognise that the UTC service was and is currently commissioned to see only 130 patients per day. However, the service on average has been providing care for more than double this number of patients across the last year, seeing approximately 270 patients per day.
Commenting on the “GOOD” rating, Care Group Chief Operating Officer, Malcolm Thomson, said: “I want to acknowledge the hard work of everybody involved in our Urgent Treatment Centre and GP Out of Hours services. It just shows the hard work that is done by our wonderful staff.
“There were one or two areas that we are aware of and are working to rectify, some of which are out of our control.
“I am particularly pleased that it was recognised by the CQC that the UTC relationship with the local community is fantastic and that there is a lot of respect for the service within the local community. The passion from the service and the people working in it was evident and that is a real testament to the Care Group and how we operate.”
Download and read the full Inspection report for UTC and GP Out of Hours services
(please note: while the report is titled – Out of Hours GP, the Urgent Treatment Centre was also assessed)
Learn more about UTC
Learn more about GP Out of Hours
