Elite Surgical

Updated 18 November 2021

Elite Surgical is a private clinic specialising in plastic and cosmetic surgery related pre and post-operative consultations.

The provider Elite Surgical Limited is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to provide the following regulated activities:

Surgical procedures

Treatment of disease, disorder or injury

The registered location 16 St Peters Road, Harborne, Birmingham B17 0AS is a residential property and no patient consultations take place here. For patients who choose to have a face to face consultation and then have surgery, this is carried out within the surgical facilities at private hospitals where the doctor has practising privileges.

The provider has a basic service level agreement in place, for the use of staff and facilities, with all the private hospitals from where patients can have consultations and surgery.

The provider delivers regulated activities and has practicing privileges at private hospitals in Birmingham, Manchester and London. These locations are independently registered and inspected with CQC and were not visited as part of this inspection.

The clinic is open from 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday. The team consists of a consultant surgeon and two part-time administrative staff who make patient appointments on the phone. They do not see patients face to face.

Patients can make an enquiry or book an appointment by telephone or by using the contact us form on the website.

When the clinic is closed there is a telephone answering service Monday to Friday 6pm to 9pm and on Saturday and Sunday between 10am and 5pm. Outside of these hours for post-operative advice patients can call the relevant private hospital. In an emergency, patients are advised to call 999 or attend the accident and emergency department.

How we inspected this service

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Requesting evidence from the provider before the inspection.
• A short site visit
• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

• Is it safe?

• Is it effective?

• Is it caring?

• Is it responsive to people’s needs?

• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 18 November 2021

This service is rated as Good overall. The service has not been inspected before.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

Elite Surgical is a private clinic specialising in plastic and cosmetic surgery related pre- and post-operative consultations based in Birmingham, with satellite clinics in Manchester and London.

The Doctor is the registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have a legal responsibility for meeting the requirements of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated regulations about how the service is run.

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Elite Surgical on 2 November 2021 as part of our inspection programme and to provide a rating for the service.

Our key findings

At this inspection we found:

• Consultations and surgical procedures were undertaken at private hospitals and not on the premises that we inspected.
• The provider had service level agreements in place with private hospitals from where regulated activities were delivered.
• The provider had a system in place to record and investigate incidents and complaints.
• The service had arrangements in place to respond to medical emergencies.
• The service had arrangements in place for providing out of hours advice and post-operative support.
• The service had clear vision and values that promoted the delivery of a high-quality service.
• The provider had systems in pace to monitor the quality of their treatment and make improvements where necessary.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Improve systems to more effectively monitor and manage staff training information for the consultant surgeon.
• Formally document initial safety risk assessments and the review of CQC inspection reports whenever a new hospital site is used. Implement a system to review the safety risk assessments at regular intervals.
• Improve the process to confirm patient identity to include checking if under 18.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care