A private doctor's surgery in Welling has been slammed by health regulators after inspectors deemed the service to be "inadequate".

7 Day Healthcare, located in Bellegrove Road, has fallen into special measures after a thorough inspection back in June which highlighted serious shortcomings when it came to providing safe services to patients.

According to a report compiled by the Care Quality Commission, 7 Day Healthcare was found to have poor safety processes, poor management of patient safety risks and "a lack of reliable systems for appropriate and safe handling of medicines",

The visiting inspector noted that on the day of inspection, the facility did not stock certain emergency medicines or have risk assessments in place to mitigate this lack of stock.

There were also no reliable systems for appropriate and safe handling of medicines on site as they did not carry out medicines audits or have access to and follow up to date travel medicines guidance.

However, the inspector did note improvement with regard to patients’ care and treatment experiences, stating that "the service treated patients with care and compassion and involved them in decisions about their care".

Speaking on these findings, Deputy Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services in London, Ursula Gallagher, said: "Private providers are expected to deliver the same standard of safe and effective care as all the other providers that we regulate. Unfortunately, 7 Day Healthcare fell short of these standards.

"7 Day Healthcare will be kept under review and if needed could be escalated to urgent enforcement action.

"Where necessary, another inspection will be conducted within a further six months, and if there is not enough improvement we will move to close the service by adopting our proposal to remove this location or cancel the provider’s registration.

"Special measures will give people who use the service the reassurance that the care they get should improve.

"I have noted that 7 Day Healthcare was rated Good for being caring and responsive and hope that it can build on these two ratings in the future."