Robin Lane Health and Wellbeing Centre is so much more than an NHS GP practice; it is truly integrated with the community it serves. Their vision is to offer the highest quality primary care to their patients and their mission is to ‘enable patients to live longer and healthier lives that are full, active and meaningful’. This means that they recognise that conventional medicine does not always hold all the solutions to a person’s health concerns. They believe in listening to their community and have learnt that social connections and activity is just as important as medical interventions for their patients’ overall wellbeing. Wellbeing is more than health.
The Café Lux coffee shop allows their patients to congregate and share together, and they’re the only GP practice in the UK with a licensed bar. They founded Love Pudsey, a charity housed next door to their main building. This centre offers a wide range of volunteer led activities and groups, so that patients have the opportunity to learn the ukulele, ball-room dance or join a book-group as an alternative to seeing the GP. Most of the activities are free to the public, and the centre itself acts as a focal point for the community.
And it’s all in the numbers – over the last five years, they have steadily grown from 8,500 patients to over 13,200 patients with no corresponding increase in the number of GP appointments. In their eyes, the more patients that join them on their journey, the more they can provide and offer. It is a journey of trust, and a journey that has the community’s health and wellbeing at its heart.
