Archived: Greyfriars Health Centre

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We visited Greyfriars Health Centre on  6 October 2014 and carried out a comprehensive inspection. We found that the practice provided a good service to patients in all of the five key areas we looked at. This applied to patients across all age ranges and to patients with varied needs due to their health or social circumstances.

The overall rating for this practice is good, with elements of outstanding practice in the care of people living in vulnerable circumstances.

Our key findings were as follows:

• Patients were satisfied with the opening hours and felt they were treated with dignity, care and respect. They were involved in decisions about their care and treatment.
• There were systems in place to provide a safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led service.
• The practice was clean and hygienic and had robust arrangements for reducing the risks from healthcare associated infections.
• The needs of the practice population were understood and services were offered to meet these.

We saw areas of outstanding practice including:

• The practice opened from 8am to 8pm, Sundays and bank holidays, including Christmas day.
• The provision of medical care and health advice to homeless patients, through a weekly clinic at the Salvation Army.
• A weekly clinic for patients who were prescribed addictive medicines, which ran alongside a clinic led by Norfolk alcohol recovery partnership. This resulted in positive outcomes for patients. For example there has been a reduction in the dose of benzodiazepines prescribed to patients who had an addiction to benzodiazepines.

Professor Steve Field (CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP) 

Chief Inspector of General Practice