Cookham GP surgery keeps Good rating after fixing previous breach

A Cookham GP practice has been granted a Good rating from the care watchdog – having fixed a breach of regulations discovered at a previous inspection.

Cookham Medical Centre is based in Lower Road and delivers services to approximately 8,000 patients under the NHS, within Frimley Integrated Care Board (ICB).

The practice has a higher-than-average number of patients over the age of 45 and fewer younger patients (under the age of 35.)

It also falls into the 10th decile for deprivation, meaning it is among the least deprived in the country.  The lower the decile, the higher the level of deprivation.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC), which inspects and rates health services from GP surgeries to care homes, carried out its latest inspection in July 8/9.

Its previous rating was Good, too, and Cookham Medical Centre maintains that – but the CQC did carry out this inspection to follow up on a breach of regulations identified at its previous one in April 2024.

The practice is no longer in breach of regulations, the CQC reports.

“The practice acted swiftly to respond to the concerns highlighted following the last inspection,” the watchdog wrote.

“We saw the arrangements to manage medicines and general governance had improved.”

This resulted in a series of changes being implemented which have now been embedded.

Staff involved in all elements of medicines management ‘spoke positively and confidently’ of the changes.

The CQC also saw the practice had improved the process of sharing learning from significant events and incidents.

Other positives include:

• There was a system in place to check patients' health before prescribing medicines, including high-risk ones, to make sure they were safe and appropriate
• Patients with long term conditions were effectively monitored at regular intervals, in line with national guidance
• Prescription stationery was kept securely, and the use of blank prescriptions monitored in line with national guidance. This prevents prescription pads being stolen to obtain or issue medicines illegally.

Patient feedback

People using the GP surgery were positive about the quality of their care and treatment.

They were positive about how they accessed care and treatment and the overall quality of the care they received.

Feedback sourced from the National GP Patient Survey regarding access and patient experience was better than local and national averages.

For example, 78 per cent of respondents found it easy to get through to the practice by telephone.

This was notably higher compared to the local average (46 per cent) and the national average (50 per cent).

As another example, 84 per cent of respondents described their overall experience of the practice as good.

This, too, was higher when compared to the local average (70 per cent) and the national average (74 per cent).

Cookham Medical Centre promoted and monitored patient feedback, collected via the NHS Friends and Family Test results.

The CQC reviewed more than 700 responses covering March to May and found 687 responses (96 per cent) rated the service received as either ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’.