Spotlight on London’s outstanding GP practices: St Andrew’s Health Centre

The care provided to patients by the staff at St Andrew’s Health Centre in Bow was rated as ‘outstanding’ in an inspection report published by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in January 2017.

It is one of 14 practices to be rated as outstanding in London to date.

What makes the care at St Andrew’s outstanding?

The quality of services at this practice was judged across five different areas: whether it is safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs, and well-led. Services were found to be either good or outstanding in each of these areas by CQC’s team of trained inspectors.

Along with providing high quality care as standard to its young and diverse patient group, the practice was found to go above and beyond expectations — taking patient care to an outstanding level:

· St Andrew’s is one of London’s out-of-hours access hubs, opening between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday for registered patients, and 8am to 8pm Monday to Sunday, 365 days of the year for walk-in patients.

· The practice supports patients to self-manage their health through a free app. Approximately 100 patients with high blood pressure were home-monitoring their blood pressure and used the technology to submit readings to their doctor, making their conditions more easy to manage and treat.

· Staff at the practice are excellent at recognising that many patients who attend the surgery have non-medical conditions too, and connect them to sources of social support. More than 200 patients were referred to the Young Carers Project, English language classes, craft groups, walking clubs, and bereavement support groups.

· As part of its ‘Well Community’ initiative, the practice also started the social group ‘Chatter Natter’ which offered support for older and potentially isolated people to meet and have some refreshments and friendly conversation. The CQC saw several examples of very positive outcomes and improved wellbeing for patients as a result of ‘social-prescribing’.

· The practice developed an educational programme called ‘DIY Health’ for parents to improve their skills, knowledge and confidence in managing minor health concerns in children under the age of five. The 12-week programme covered topics such as fever, feeding, gastroenteritis, cold and flu and ear pain. One of the practice GPs ran an event for parents of children with eczema and created an illustrative book called ‘Sharing Stories with Itchysaurus’.

You can find out more about how St Andrew’s delivers its outstanding care here.