Updated 19 June 2018
Your Health Partnership – Whiteheath Medical Centre is a partnership of four practice and two branch sites. Whiteheath Medical centre provides NHS services to the local community in Oldbury, West Midlands. The practice has an approximate patient population of 8000 and is part of the NHS Sandwell and West Birmingham Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). CCGs are groups of general practices that work together to plan and design local health services in England. They do this by 'commissioning' or buying health and care services.
The practice has recently merged its patient list size with a combined total of 46,000 patients. where patients were able to visit any of the practices for care and treatment. The provider has not amended its registration as a result of the merging of the practice list; therefore we inspected Whiteheath Medical Centre, Badsey Rd, Oldbury as part of our inspection programme and this report reflect findings for this site only.
The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide primary medical services. Services to patients are provided under a General Medical Services (GMS) contract used when services are agreed locally with a practice which may include additional services beyond the standard contract. The practice has expanded its contracted obligations to provide enhanced services to patients. An enhanced service is above the contractual requirement of the practice and is commissioned to improve the range of services available to patients.
The clinical team includes four GPs (one female and three male). The nursing team worked centrally and included advanced nurse practitioners. Many other functions were also centralised. For example, there was a centralised governance team which was based at the surgery.
Practice level data available to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) shows the service serves a higher than average number of patients who are aged between 14 and 18 years when compared to the national average. The number of patients aged 65 and over is slightly lower than average. Based on data available from Public Health England, the levels of deprivation in the area served by the surgery shows the practice is located in a more deprived area than national averages, ranked at two out of 10, with 10 being the least deprived. (Deprivation covers a broad range of issues and refers to unmet needs caused by a lack of resources of all kinds, not just financial).
The practice is open Monday to Friday between 8am and 6.30pm. Extended hours appointments are offered every Saturday morning from 8.30am to 11am and appointments can be booked over the telephone, online or in person at the surgery. Sunday telephone consultations are available from 9am to 10am. Patients are provided information on how to access an out of hours service by calling the surgery or viewing the practice website (https://yhp.org.uk/whiteheath).
The practice runs a number of services for its patients including; chronic disease management, new patient checks, smoking cessation, phlebotomy, travel vaccines and advice. The practice offered a number of practice-based, consultant-led outpatient clinics to patients requiring specialist advice such as Cardiology, Dermatology, Ear Nose and Throat (ENT), Gynaecology, Ophthalmology and Rheumatology.