King George Hospital’s Emergency Urgent Care Centre (EUCC) has been taken out of special measures after receiving the rating six months ago.

Following an inspection of the EUCC at the Goodmayes hospital by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), King George’s has now overall been rated as “good” improving on safety, effectiveness, care, responsiveness and leadership.

The EUCC - which is an NHS walk-in service for patients whose condition is urgent enough that they cannot wait for the next GP appointment but who do not need emergency treatment at the emergency department - was placed in special measures in August last year following a rating of “inadequate”.

However, the new report recognised significant improvements made to the quality of care provided by the EUCC, including a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation, leadership to support the delivery of high-quality care and improvements to the physical layout to make it more conducive to maintaining patients’ privacy.

The EUCC is run by the Partnership of East London Co-operatives (PELC), a not-for-profit social enterprise delivering NHS integrated urgent care services to more than two million people across east London and West Essex.

Brian Jones, who took over as chief executive of PELC following the previous report, said:

“This is fantastic news for the King George’s EUCC and the communities we serve there.

“We are incredibly proud of our staff and the services we provide and the CQC findings are testament to the continued determination to provide the best possible care for patients.

“This is an incredible turnaround by the team achieved within the space of six short months.

“Today’s announcement highlights the considerable progress we have made at the King George Hospital.

“However, we will not rest here – we continue to work hard across all our services to provide high quality, responsive and personalised care for our patients.”