Archived: Loughton Private Medical Clinic

Updated 12 August 2019

Loughton Private Medical Centre is a private clinic, located in a converted residential property in High Road, Loughton, Essex. The practice sees less than ten patients per week.

The clinic provides cardiac diagnostic services for adults only.

The registered provider of the regulated activities at this location is Dr David Dighton, who is a doctor (in this report referred to as ‘the provider’). The provider is registered with CQC to provide diagnostic and screening procedures. He is supported by a cardiac physiologist.

Prior to the inspection, we reviewed any notifications or enquiries we had received from or about the clinic. We reviewed the last two inspections in January 2019 and March 2019 and information submitted by the service in response to our provider information request. During our visit we spoke with the lead physician, interviewed staff and reviewed records and documents.

During our visit we:

• Looked at the systems in place for the running of the service.

• Explored how clinical decisions were made.

• Viewed a sample of key policies and protocols which related to regulated activities.

• Spoke with staff involved in the regulated activities.

• Checked the environment and infection control measures.

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 12 August 2019

This service is rated as Good overall.

(Two recent inspections were carried out: the first on 11 January 2019 and at this inspection we found that the service was not providing safe, effective or well-led care in accordance with the regulations. The second follow-up inspection on 11 March 2019 focused on these key areas and we found that the provider had made the necessary improvements and was providing safe, effective, and well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.)

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 Loughton Private Medical Centre as part of our regulatory function. This inspection was planned to check whether Loughton Private Medical Centre was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

The practice is a private clinic, located in Loughton in Essex. The clinic provides cardiac diagnostic services to adults. Since the first inspection, the provider has reviewed the regulated activities they provide and reduced them in number, focusing on cardiac diagnosis and screening only.

The physician 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 legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

There were no completed CQC comment cards to review as only six patients had attended the clinic in the two weeks prior to the inspection, when the cards were available, and none of these had completed a card.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCPHYSICIAN
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care