The inspection focused on the Hounslow Urgent Care Centre, part of the Hounslow and Richmond Community Healthcare NHS Trust, which provides urgent care and treatment to people who require immediate but non life-threatening medical attention. The centre opened in March 2012 and is situated close to West Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust.

The centre is staffed by General Practitioners (GPs), family doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff and is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The centre treated people with minor injuries and illnesses that required urgent treatment.

On the day of our inspection we met and spoke with eleven patients and their relatives and representatives, including adults and children. We spoke with eighteen staff members working at the centre or providing services to the centre, including doctors, nurses, therapists and safeguarding teams. We also spoke with staff from the governance and quality service department. As part of our inspection, we contacted several stakeholders, including LINks – the Local Involvement Networks, and local authority staff.

The people we spoke with said that they had received good care. One person said “staff are professionals, they know what they are doing, I trust their judgements”.

Another person said “I’ve got no complaints; staff do an excellent job here”.

We asked people about information they had received about their injury and treatment and people confirmed this was effective.

We inspected four services within Hounslow and Richmond Community Healthcare NHS Trust (HRCH). These were the Hounslow Diabetic Service (HDS), the Richmond Diabetic Service (RDS), The Community Rehabilitation Service in Hounslow and the recently integrated health and social care service known as the Richmond Rapid Response and Rehabilitation Team in Richmond (RRRT). This team had two sites; we visited the site based at the Teddington Memorial Hospital.

Patients expressed their views and were involved in making decisions about their care and treatment. The patients we spoke with praised the staff and commented on how well they had been treated. They said that staff were "respectful", "polite" and "helpful". One patient said "The therapists were wonderful, explained everything very well and in detail". One patient said "I have learned more about my diabetic condition in two visits to the clinic than in the previous eight years since being first diagnosed".

Specialist nurses shared an office which promoted effective communication, faster referrals and a seamless support to people. Staff gave examples of how individual patients had been supported through internal referrals. Therapists and specialist staff liaised regularly with local services and voluntary agencies to support people’s recovery, transfer and discharge. Records for three members of staff showed that they had attended training on manual handling, medical devices and moving and handling.

There were enough qualified, skilled and experienced staff to meet people’s needs. The patients and staff we spoke with felt there were sufficient staff to meet the patient and service needs.

Senior staff told us that there was a new unified triage process that screened inward referrals to the RRRT, but beyond this there was no further audits or checks made to screen, monitor or review the appropriateness of referrals. While patients were satisfied with the quality of the care provided by the RRRT, we had some concerns about the way the service was managing risks and monitoring quality. We have told the provider to take action to put this right.

Patients were made aware of the complaints system and was provided in a format that met their needs. The trust had leaflets that contained information about how to make a complaint and how to obtain a copy of the leaflet in another language.

Patients gave compliments about their experiences of the services received via 'thank you' letters, cards and emails. They expressed their appreciation and gratitude towards staff working across the service.