Cleveland Clinic London Hospital

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, took account of their individual needs, and helped them understand their conditions. They provided emotional support to patients, families, and carers. The service constantly asked people for feedback, which was persistently positive and achieved the provider’s expected standards. Such standards were furthered by the team’s internal audit system and care ethos that focused on patient centred, compassionate care.

This service scored 80 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

Kindness and compassion were embedded in all aspects of care and the ethos of the service. Above and beyond the care delivered by GPs, the patient safety team operated safety frameworks within a culture of compassionate, connected care. They focused on ensuring patient safety whilst supporting staff to establish referral and signposting systems that met the increasingly complex social needs of patients.

Staff understood factors that could cause anxiety and worry amongst patients. They used effective communication strategies to provide support, including time and space to ask questions. GPs had identified a wide range of specialist organisations, including other private providers, community services, and non-profit groups, that focused on wider needs of patients, such as drug and alcohol cessation and social care. They worked with other services to which patients were known, such as their registered NHS GP, to coordinate onward care.

Patients rated the care and compassion provided by staff highly. In the previous 12 months, 100% of patients rated their overall experience as excellent or good. In the same period, 98% said communication and standards of care with doctors and nurses was good or excellent. These results were reported at provider level and reflected care feedback across all 3 GP locations.

The front desk team provided patients with a private waiting area if they preferred to be away from others. This team recognised when patients were in distress, and they were proactive in providing comfort and dignified support. This was standard practice across the provider’s GP locations, and we saw it in practice at this site.

GPs treated people as individuals and made sure their care, support and treatment met their needs and preferences. The service took account of each person’s preferred outcomes, culture, circumstances, and protected characteristics.

We saw staff treat patients as individuals during all their interactions. During a corporate health check, the GP discussed the process with the patient and explained what they were doing and why. They anticipated the patient’s concerns and needs and adapted their communication and approach to the individual. This was repeated throughout our inspection and staff at all levels had an inherent understanding of how to meet each person’s needs. This was reflected in patient feedback, in which 98% of patients said the care team were always responsive. This result was reported at provider level and reflected care feedback across all 3 outpatient locations.

Equality, diversity and human rights training was mandatory for all staff and enabled the team to address needs and requests in relation to culture, religion, and personal preferences. The ethos of the service was person-centred and staff demonstrably placed patients at the centre of their work.

In addition, the provider had a robust concerns, complaints and compliments policy and procedure. Complaint handling and customer service training was provided which included empathetic listening and effective service recovery. A bespoke training session was mandatory for staff which explained the support provided by the Patient Experience Manager and how the complaints procedure worked. Cleveland clinic also had a subscription to ISCAS, the external adjudicator ensuring they adhered to the complaints management framework and code of practice.

Staff promoted people’s independence, made sure they knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

Patients spoke highly of access and coordinated care in the service. Patients we spoke with noted how their health outcomes were better because they had control over appointment times and what they covered with the doctor.

GPs recognised the right of each patient to make unadvisable choices in relation to their health, such as declining diagnostics or health promotion interventions. They supported patients in a nonjudgemental way and made sure each person had the information they needed to make an informed decision.

Staff delivered care within an overarching privacy and dignity policy that guided them in ensuring patients had choice and as much control as possible in care decisions. This extended beyond flexible appointment times and meant patients could choose how the service could meet their needs relating to culture, religion, and personal identity.

Staff respected each patient’s individual choice and adapted care and treatment to meet protected characteristics, culture, religion, and personal preferences within safety guidance.

Staff were trained as chaperones and proactively offered this service to patients for minor surgery treatments and where they assessed the patient as anxious or in need of additional support.

Patient records reflected how GPs supported patients to make informed decisions about care and treatment. Notes from follow-up appointments and reviews were comprehensive, such as for pathology, prescriptions, and referrals to specialist services.

Most onward referrals were to other private healthcare services. GPs referred patients to NHS services, or back to their NHS GP, on request. This ensured patients always had a choice about treatment and care at each stage they needed it.

In addition, the GP services introduced a women's health webinar and seminars for the local community and corporates to promote independence, choice, and control by ensuring women received personalised, evidence-based information and support to manage their health. This included menopause, cardiovascular risk, bone health, and wellbeing, empowering them to make decisions aligned with their values and lifestyle. The provider sent is a case study as evidence.

The service listened to and understood people’s needs, views and wishes. GPs met the immediate needs of patients including when they required onward referral or signposting. For example, where a patient had presented with dental pain, the GP carried out an examination, prescribed immediate pain relief, and referred the patient to the most appropriate dental service locally.

In the previous 12 months 100% of patients rated their overall experience as good or excellent.

The electronic patient records system, shared across all sites, included a flagging feature to alert staff to additional needs at the first point of contact when patients presented for an appointment. For example, reception staff could identify quickly if the patient was known to have safeguarding, language, or chaperone needs. They also used this system to identify if a patient’s previous behaviour meant they could only be seen with 2 members of staff, or a particular gender of staff, for the team’s safety. This was a common process staff were trained to follow across all 3 GP services.

As patients could self-refer to the service, GPs did not always have extensive medical history information for each individual. They assessed this on an individual basis and ensured care and treatment requests were clinically indicated and appropriate for the patient’s desired outcome and health needs.

All staff undertook cultural awareness education sessions that covered all aspects of how to understand and meet patients’ needs. The provider had a spiritual care service that supported patients, families, and staff regardless of faith.

While the provider did not offer a dedicated mental health service on an outpatient basis, psychologists were based in acute medicine and provided support in the event a patient presented with urgent needs.

Staff wellbeing was at the core of the provider’s values and included a multidimensional wellbeing support system in which leaders were upskilled to understand the psychology of day-to-day staff wellbeing. The provider facilitated psychological safety and empowered all staff to give candid, constructive feedback.

The provider had increased the number of trained mental health first aiders (MHFAs) four-fold since the programme was introduced, reflecting need. MHFAs undertook an intensive training programme led by a clinical psychologist to be certified as practitioners by an external body.

GPs told us they felt supported and respected and had good opportunities for development. They appreciated the provider’s focus on wellbeing and their responsiveness to feedback about work-life balance.

The primary care senior team focused on empathy and ensured their team, and those supporting them, had an open-door invitation to share worries and space to seek advice.

Results from the most recent annual staff survey, which included the whole hospital, were positive overall and staff reported feeling empowered, supported by leaders, and said they felt a sense of belonging to the provider. Senior staff implemented action plans, based on exploratory discussions with staff, to address areas for improvement. This included in staffing levels and support for new staff during their probationary period.

Staff were a key focus of the provider’s vision and values, which included empowering staff to be accountable for their performance and achievements and to be innovative and inclusive in their work.