Urgent primary care services work well but are under-resourced, says CQC

The vast majority of urgent primary care services in England work well and provide a good, cost effective service, but their worth is underestimated with poor resourcing, the main NHS regulator has said.1

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) collected results and ratings from its inspections of 147 providers of urgent primary care: 64 urgent care and walk-in centres, 20 NHS 111 services, and 63 GP out-of-hours services.

Results showed that most (87%) of these providers were rated as either good (118) or outstanding (10), while 13% were either described as requiring improvement (16) or rated as inadequate (3).

The authors emphasised that …