JA Medical

Updated 28 March 2023

JA Medical Services provides health travel consultations from two separately registered locations in Kent: JA Medical Services and Cosmopolitan Medical Clinic. This inspection concerned only JA Medical Services, located at Room 28, Orpington Health & Wellbeing Centre19 Homefield Rise Orpington BR6 0FE.

The service is registered with the CQC to provide the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury. The clinical team includes one female nurse. There is a lead GP located at Cosmopolitan Medical Clinic that provides support to the nurse if required. There are two admin team members who work remotely.

The service is located within a health centre, with several other healthcare providers operating from within the centre. The provider operates from one clinical room on the first floor, from a newly purpose-built building (September 2019), with step-free street level access. The building is accessible to wheelchair users. There are accessible patient toilets.

Services are available to any fee-paying patient; the service sees babies from 8 weeks old, children and adults. Services are available by appointment only, opening hours are Monday to Friday 9am–5pm and Saturday 9am-12pm.

The service website address is www.ja-medical.co.uk

How we inspected this service

We visited JA Medical on 08 March 2023, before the inspection, we reviewed notifications received about the service, and a standard information questionnaire completed by the service. We spoke with the lead nurse, looked at consent forms, reviewed policies and procedures and looked at risk assessments. During the inspection, we interviewed the lead nurse, building manager, made observations and reviewed documents.

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 28 March 2023

This service is rated as Good overall. (Previous inspection May 2019– Good)

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Requires improvement

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at JA Medical as part of our inspection programme.

This provider offers private vaccinations, travel and health screening services.

JA Medical Services is a private travel and health clinic based in Orpington Kent, they provide a range of services, including vaccinations, screening, and free health travel consultations. The service has a 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 legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

JA Medical Services is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the following regulated activities: Treatment of disease, disorder or injury; Diagnostic and screening procedures.

Our key findings were:

• Some polices and procedures were not up to date on the day of the inspection, however these were reviewed and developed shortly after the inspection.
• The provider organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs.
• Patients could access care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Update policies and procedures to reflect document control.
• Update Patient Group Directions (PGDs) so they reflect current guidance.
• Review process for checking patient identity.
• Review system for monitoring pathology results.
• Risk assess/update procedure for accessing defibrillator.
• Obtain references for staff members prior to starting employment.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Healthcare