Enter and view: New Medical Centre

Healthwatch Havering carried out an Enter and View visit to New Medical Centre in Romford and found it to be a patient-focused and innovative GP practice serving almost 10,000 patients. The practice offered a range of services for people with long-term conditions, dementia and learning disabilities, and provided facilities such as online appointments, a hearing loop, translation services and disabled access. Staff were observed to be friendly and helpful, and the surgery appeared clean and well maintained despite parts of the building looking dated pending planned refurbishment and extension works. 

The practice had introduced several initiatives to support older and vulnerable patients, including named GPs for all patients over 70, a multidisciplinary frailty and dementia project, and a “gold card” scheme for patients with limited life expectancy to enable priority access to support and prescriptions. Healthwatch also noted that all patients with learning disabilities had received annual health checks. 

A particular strength was the highly active Patient Participation Group (PPG), which organised health information events, fundraising activities and campaigns to reduce missed appointments. The PPG was working with the practice to introduce text appointment reminders and had developed initiatives to raise awareness of the costs associated with missed appointments. 

Overall, Healthwatch concluded that the practice provided a positive service but identified some areas for improvement, including delays in obtaining new patient records, difficulties securing hospital appointments, and reports of long waits when telephoning the surgery. Recommendations focused on improving access to records, reducing telephone waiting times, tackling missed appointments and continuing the strong partnership with the Patient Participation Group.