Practice information

Legal practice details

Higham Hill Medical Centre holds a contract with NHS England to provide primary medical services. The contractor is a partnership and is not a limited partnership.

The partners are Dr Duncan Wallace (GP Partner) and Mr Amer Agha (Partner). The full names of the people performing services under the contract are published on our team page.

Professional qualifications

Each healthcare professional working at the practice is registered with the relevant professional body: doctors with the General Medical Council, nurses with the Nursing and Midwifery Council, pharmacists with the General Pharmaceutical Council, and allied health professionals with the Health and Care Professions Council.

Individual professional qualifications for each clinician are listed alongside their name on our team page.

Our practice area

Our usual practice area covers Higham Hill, Walthamstow and the surrounding parts of Waltham Forest, with an outer boundary reaching Blackhorse Road, Chingford Hall, Wood Street and Leyton.

We also accept registrations from people living outside our usual practice area. If you register on this basis, the practice is not obliged to provide home visits, and urgent care at home would be arranged through local services instead.

If you are unsure whether your address falls inside our practice area, please contact reception and we will check for you.

Your named accountable GP

Every registered patient is assigned a named accountable GP who is responsible for overseeing your care at the practice. You can ask reception at any time to tell you who your named GP is.

For patients aged 75 and over, the named accountable GP also takes responsibility for working with other health and social care professionals involved in your care, so that all the services you need are delivered together.

Having a named GP does not prevent you from seeing any other clinician at the practice, and it does not change how you contact us.

Choosing which clinician you see

You have the right to express a preference to see or speak to a particular GP or other clinician. Tell us your preference when you make an online request, or let reception know when you call.

We will do our best to meet your preference. Sometimes this means waiting a little longer, or being offered an appointment with another member of the team if your request is urgent or if that clinician is unavailable.

Home visits

Home visits are for patients who are genuinely housebound or too unwell to travel to the surgery, for example because of frailty, advanced illness or end-of-life care. Care given at home is usually less thorough than care at the surgery, where we have full facilities.

To request a home visit, please call the practice on the main phone line as early in the day as possible so that a clinician can assess the request. A member of our clinical team may call you back first to decide whether a visit is the right response.

Home visits are not routinely available to patients who registered from outside our usual practice area.

Your rights and responsibilities

You can expect to be treated with respect and dignity, to have your confidentiality protected, to be given clear information about your care and to be involved in decisions about your treatment.

• please attend appointments on time, and cancel as early as you can if you no longer need one
• please tell us if your name, address, telephone number or email address changes
• please give us accurate information about your symptoms and medicines
• please treat our team and other patients with courtesy and respect at all times
• please use one appointment for one person, and tell us in advance if you need an interpreter

Our NHS commissioner

Our services are commissioned by NHS North East London Integrated Care Board. You can contact the commissioner if you would like to raise a concern about the practice with someone independent.

Teaching and training

We are proud to support the next generation of NHS staff. The practice is involved in training and developing healthcare professionals, including staff working towards further clinical qualifications.

If a student or trainee is involved in your appointment, we will always tell you beforehand and you can ask for them not to be present. This will never affect the care you receive.

GP net earnings

NHS England requires every practice to publish the mean net earnings of its GPs. This figure relates only to the practice and is not a comparison with any other practice.

The published figure and the number of full-time, part-time and locum GPs who worked in the practice for more than six months is available from the practice manager and will be published here for the current financial year.

Ask the practice manager by email at nelondonicb.highamhill@nhs.net or call 020 8527 2677.

Friends and Family Test

The Friends and Family Test asks one simple question: overall, how was your experience of our service? It takes less than a minute and helps us understand what we are doing well and what we could improve.

You can complete the test at reception, or ask a member of our team for a form. We publish the results of completed tests and review them every month as a practice.

Ask the practice manager by email at nelondonicb.highamhill@nhs.net or call 020 8527 2677.

Our CQC rating

The Care Quality Commission inspects and rates GP practices. Higham Hill Medical Centre has an overall rating of Good, inspected 22 November 2021.