Updated 9 November 2022
St Stephen’s Health Centre is a GP practice situated in Bow Community Hall, William Place, London E3 5ED, and is a purpose-built surgery with access to 22 consulting rooms.
The practice works on site and collaboratively with a number of community services and allied health professionals; including two mental health nurses, a smoking cessation advisor, substance misuse and alcohol advisors, specialist diabetes nurses, Citizen’s Advice Bureau advisors, and physiotherapists and pharmacists.
St Stephen’s Health Centre provides NHS primary care services to approximately 13,200 patients living in the Bow area of Tower Hamlets through a General Medical Services (GMS) contract (a contract between NHS England and general practices for delivering general medical services and is the commonest form of GP contract). The practice is part of NHS North East London ICB (Integrated Care Board), and 32 GP practices within Tower Hamlets that is split into seven networks. St Stephen’s Health Centre is part of the Bow Health Network which is comprised of five neighbouring practices. The provider is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to provide the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures; treatment of disease; disorder or injury; maternity and midwifery services; surgical procedures; and family planning.
St Stephen’s Health Centre is open between 8.30am and 6.30pm Monday to Friday. Extended surgery hours are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 6.30pm to 7.30pm, and Thursday 7.30am to 8.30am. The contract for extended hours was recently revised at the time of our inspection and provided as part of a collaborative of four primary care networks, this enables patients to access GPs, practice nurses and health care assistants until 8pm weekdays and 9-5pm Saturdays.
The practice clinical staff are four female GP partners, five female and two male salaried GPs, two GP registrars, five practice nurses and three healthcare assistants. In addition, two network pharmacists, two network physiotherapists and one network mental health advisor are based at the practice several days over the week. The practice management and administration team are a practice manager, a deputy practice manager role (being recruited to at the time of the inspection), an operations manager and approximately 20 administration and reception staff.
The practice is a GP Registrar training practice and a Queen Mary and Westfield University ‘superhub’ teaching practice for medical students. The practice supports a practice nurse from the ‘Open Doors’ practice nurse programme (an initiative set up in 2007 in response to practice nurse shortages in Tower Hamlets, the scheme recruits nurses from secondary care and provides them with practice nurse training and undertake secondment in general practices in the area).
Information published by Public Health England shows that deprivation within the practice population group is in the third lowest decile (two of 10). The lower the decile, the more deprived the practice population is relative to others. The ethnic make-up of the practice area is 57% Asian, 21% White, 15% Black, 4% Mixed, and 3% Other.