North Avenue Surgery

Updated 27 December 2019

North Avenue Surgery is located on the outskirts of Southend on Sea town centre. The practice provides services for approximately 2,600 patients living in the area from their surgery on North Avenue. The practice has no branch surgeries.

The practice is governed by a partnership of two GPs, one male and one female. They are supported by one long term locum GP, one practice nurse who works part time, a practice manager and three reception / administration staff.

North Avenue Surgery is a teaching practice.

GP services are commissioned by Southend Clinical Commissioning Group. Public Health data shows that the practice population is in the third most deprived scale and the practice population is 92% white. 55% of the patient population are in paid work or full-time education, compared with the local average of 59% and the England average of 62%.

Updated 27 December 2019

We carried out an inspection of North Avenue Surgery due to the length of time since the last inspection. Following our review of the information available to us, including information provided by the practice, we focused our inspection on the following key questions:

• Are services at this location effective?
• Are services at this location well-led?

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 and good for all of the population groups except families, children and young people.

We rated the population group, children, families and young people as requires improvement because the practice had not met the minimum 90% target for three of four childhood immunisation uptake indicators.

We found that:

• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• There were effective systems to teach and support GP registrars.
• The practice worked with other professionals and stakeholders in the community.
• The way the practice was managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centred care.

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

• Formalise the procedure for multi-agency care.
• Review the system for the uptake of childhood immunisations to ensure that data is recorded accurately and that national immunisation targets are achieved.
• Improve the system to ensure all appropriate patients are included on the palliative care register.
• Continue to improve the outcomes for patients with diabetes and continue to improve cancer screening uptake.

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

Updated 27 December 2019

Updated 27 December 2019

Updated 27 December 2019

Updated 27 December 2019

Updated 27 December 2019

Updated 27 December 2019