Two GP practices have been given a ‘clean bill of health’ in London’s East End by Care Quality Commission inspectors—while another 23 around the country are said to need improving or the service is inadequate.

Both Island medical centre in East Ferry Road, Millwall, on the Isle of Dogs, and the Strouts Place practice in Pelter Street, Bethnal Green, have been rated ‘good’ by the inspectors.

The monitoring was part of the latest round of inspections of 111 practices around the country to ensure NHS standards are being maintained, under the commission’s new programme of inspections

It found 81 practices to be ‘good’, including the two NHS Tower Hamlets practices, while 19 elsewhere in the country “require improvement” and four were said to be “inadequate”. Only one was listed “outstanding” in its care services to patients.

“We still see evidence of too much poor care,” Chief Inspector Prof Steve Field said. “We’ve found 200 practices to be inadequate since we began inspecting them in 2014. This is a minority, but still amounts to half-a-million patients not receiving basic standards of care that they should expect from their GP.”

Practices which are not up to scratch are put into ‘special measures’—there are 97 surgeries which have now been taken out of special measures since 2014 following improvements in patient care.