Wellness @The Clinic

Updated 25 July 2023

Wellness @ The Clinic is registered with the CQC as an independent healthcare service for regulated activities. The clinic is located at 211-219, Leeds Road, Nelson BB9 8EH.

The provider, Wellness @ The Clinic Ltd employs 2 GPs and 4 reception staff. Other clinicians working from the clinic are classed as self-employed. The provider offers a range of services that require a fee to be paid. At the time of this inspection those regulated activities within the scope of CQC registration included intravenous therapies and intramuscular injections. The service’s website also referred to offering a slimming services the provider told us that this was no longer offered and that the website was currently being updated to reflect changes in the range of services offered at the clinic.

The service is located within an older stone fronted building that was previously owned by NHS Property Services. The clinic offered several consultation rooms on the ground floor. Two of these consultation rooms were dedicated clinical rooms where regulated activities were undertaken. This clinic location provided disabled access and offered adapted toileting facilities to support people with disabilities. The clinical rooms were spacious, comfortable and equipped to undertake procedures such as intravenous therapy or removal of skin lesions.

The service is registered with the CQC to provide the following regulated activities:

Surgical procedures

Treatment of disease, disorder and injury

Diagnostic and screening procedures.

The provider also offered some services that were outside the scope of CQC registration and these included offering a range of health care medicals, beauty therapies and health and wellbeing therapies.

The website for the clinic, https://wellnessattheclinic.com allows people to book appointments online or via the telephone.Wellness @The Clinic opening times are Monday to Friday 11am to 8pm and Saturdays 10 am until 6pm.

How we inspected this service:

As part of the inspection we reviewed some of the service’s policies, procedures and other documentation and carried out a site visit to the location of the service where we spent time with the registered manager and the private GP.

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 25 July 2023

This service is rated as Good overall.

Following our inspection on 5 July 2023 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

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Wellness @The Clinic as part of our inspection programme, and to provide the service with a rating.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of regulated activities and services and these are set out in Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 (HSCA 2014).

Wellness @The Clinic provides a range of services both within and outside the CQC scope of registration. The services within the scope of registration were inspected and these included the intravenous therapies service, where a range of different multi-vitamins infusions were administered, intramuscular injections administered to treat pain and a health condition such as hay fever and the removal of minor skin lesions by cryotherapy.

Services offered outside the scope of registration included types of ‘wellbeing’ holistic therapies, such as acupuncture, massage and beauty treatments. The service also offered ear syringing undertaken by an audiologist and non-therapeutic circumcision to boys under the age of six months, undertaken by a non-clinical practitioner. Both these services are exempt from regulation as they are provided by persons not listed within the HSCA 2014.

Dr Mohammad Y Arshad is a GP and the registered manager for the service. 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.

As part of our inspection methodology we request registered service providers to encourage their patients to share feedback directly with CQC. Before this inspection visit we received 18 ‘Feedback On Care’ forms. All these feedback forms provided positive feedback regarding the service they received.

Our key findings were:

• The service provided care and treatment in a way that kept patients safe.

• The service offered a range of different services, many of which were not within the scope of CQC registration. Those services that were within CQC scope were offered on a private, fee-paying basis only and were accessible to patients who chose to use them.

• The provider’s website, https://wellnessattheclinic.com offered comprehensive information about the different types of services they offered and included details of fees for each service. The website was in the process of being updated as the provider no longer offered slimming treatments.

• A comprehensive range of policies and procedures were available and these included safeguarding policies for adults and children, responding to a medical emergency, a recruitment policy and a business continuity policy.

• The service employed a small, stable staff team. Team members spoken with were aware of their own role and responsibilities and told us they felt supported The GPs and other clinicians who worked at the service were appropriately trained for the range of regulated activities offered.

• Patient feedback was actively sought and where issues were identified changes made to improve service quality. The feedback we received directly and seen on the inspection visit was very positive.

• There were systems in place for identifying, acting on and learning from incidents, patient safety alerts and complaints.

• Governance arrangements and quality improvement activity were established and there were plans in place to expand the range of regulated activities to include phlebotomy and private GP services.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Update, as planned, the service’s website to reflect the current ranges of clinical services offered.

• Facilitate or obtain evidence that nurses are trained to level 3 in safeguarding in accordance with the intercollegiate guidance.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services