Archived: InHealth Cardiac Unit - St Peter's Hospital

Updated 5 September 2019

InHealth Limited is operated by InHealth Limited. The service opened in 1998. It is a private service located on the grounds of St Peters Hospital in Surrey. The service primarily serves the communities of Spelthorne, Runnymede, Elmbridge, Woking, and parts of Surrey Heath and Epsom.

The service offers a range of cardiac interventional procedures including angiograms and pacemaker procedures. As a 24-hour heart attack centre offering primary percutaneous coronary intervention in-hours, the service operates from 7.30 am until 6pm Monday to Friday and out of hours; from 6 pm until 7.30am on call staff are on standby to manage emergency cases.

The current registered manager has been in post since December 2018.

Updated 5 September 2019

InHealth Limited is operated by InHealth Limited. The service has two purpose built cardiac catherisation laboratories within the unit. A catherisation laboratory is an examination room with a specially designed X-ray machine used to perform minimally invasive tests and procedures to diagnose and treat cardiovascular disease. Facilities include two cardiac catherisation laboratories, a control area and a 10 bedded day ward.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out an unannounced inspection on 2 July 2019.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Services we rate

We rated it as Good overall.

We found the following areas of good practice:

• The service was visibly clean and tidy and there was no incidence of a hospital acquired infection in the reporting time period.

• Equipment was regularly serviced, cleaned and checked.

• There was a positive incident reporting culture. Staff knew how to report incidents, what incidents to report and were informed of learning from incidents through staff meetings and newsletters.

• Staff of varying disciplines from both the host hospital and InHealth worked well together as a team. We saw teamwork was particularly good within catherisation laboratories with each staff member having a voice and an equal place within the team.

• Staff provided care to patients in a professional, compassionate and caring manner.

• The leadership was visible and approachable. Staff felt comfortable to raise concerns with managers.

• The service had appropriate governance structures. Senior managers used performance data to identify, mitigate and learn from incidents.

However, we found an area of practice that the service needed to improve:

• The service should consider providing staff with chaperone training.

Dr Nigel Acheson

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (South East)

Updated 5 September 2019

We rated this service as good because it provided a safe, caring, responsive and well led service. We do not rate effective.

Updated 9 December 2015

Staff were found to be caring and responsive to patient’s needs. Clinical outcomes were seen to be in-line or better than national performance in a range of areas.

The environment was well maintained and generally fit for purpose; there were systems in place to protect patients from the risk of infections. Processes and procedures were in place for ensuring that the risks associated with the use of ionising radiation were managed appropriately and in line with national requirements.

Services were organised so that they met the needs of the local population however further work was required to ensure that staff had the necessary skills and experience to manage patients living with dementia; this had already been acknowledged as an area which required improvement by the provider.

Improvements were required in a range of areas including how incidents and risks were reported and managed. There was an inconsistent approach to how staff reported clinical incidents and there was some discrepancy amongst staff with what constituted a reportable incident.

Nursing and radiology staffing levels were, in the main, found to be sufficient. Whilst the service did not utilise a formal patient acuity tool to determine staffing levels, the local management team reviewed and assessed staffing levels on a regular basis to ensure the needs of patients could be met. Where temporary bank and agency staff were required, induction programmes were in place to ensure individuals were orientated to the service as well as there being a process in place to determine the competency of individuals to ensure they had the right skills and knowledge to care for patients receiving care in this specialist environment.