The Hollybank Practice is registered with the Care Quality Commission and was rated Good in all five domains at our most recent inspection in March 2023, with the report public on the CQC website. Both doctors hold current GMC licences with annual appraisal and five-yearly revalidation — Dr Marsh revalidated in 2024, Dr Okafor in 2023 — and Helen Grady is registered with the NMC as an independent prescriber. Our clinical indemnity is with the Medical Protection Society, and the practice carries £10m public liability cover.

We prescribe to NICE guidance and we decline politely when asked to do otherwise: no antibiotics for viral illness, no benzodiazepines on demand, no unlicensed weight-loss prescribing, whatever a clinic in a browser advert may offer. Every consultation is recorded in a structured clinical record, significant events are reviewed monthly as a team, and we audit our own antibiotic and referral rates against national averages each quarter. The audits go on the waiting-room noticeboard, including the quarters we didn’t like.

Records are held in a UK-hosted, NHS-Digital-accredited clinical system, encrypted at rest and in transit, with access logged per user. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office and we share nothing — not with insurers, not with employers, not with your NHS practice — without your written consent, except where law requires it. You can have a full copy of your record within seven days of asking, free, because it is your record.

The unexciting disciplines, done properly. Consulting rooms are cleaned to a published schedule and audited against national infection-prevention standards twice a year; sharps and clinical waste go through a licensed contractor with the paperwork kept. Vaccines live in a monitored pharmacy fridge with a continuous temperature log and an alarm that rings Dr Marsh’s phone at 3 am if the reading drifts — it has, twice, and both batches were destroyed rather than risked. Emergency equipment — anaphylaxis kit, defibrillator, oxygen — is checked weekly against a signed rota, and every clinician holds current resuscitation training. None of this appears in a consultation; all of it is why the consultation can be calm.

Nothing happens to you at Hollybank without your understanding first — not as a form, as a conversation. For any intimate examination a trained chaperone is offered every time, whoever you are and whoever the clinician is; Helen Grady and our practice manager both hold the chaperone training, and declining is recorded as your choice, not assumed. Children are examined with a parent present and are spoken to directly, at their level, about what is happening. Interpreting is arranged by telephone within minutes for any language, at our cost. And if you want a second opinion — from within the practice or outside it — asking for one will never change how you are treated here.

We run a duty-of-candour policy without being asked twice: if we make a mistake, you hear it from us first, with an apology and what we are changing. Complaints go to the practice manager, are acknowledged within two working days and answered fully within twenty; if our answer does not satisfy, we will help you escalate to the Independent Sector Complaints Adjudication Service, of which we are a subscriber. We received three complaints in 2024. All three replies started with the word sorry.