Archived: Briarswood Clinic

Updated 23 December 2019

Our inspection team was led by a member of the CQC medicines team and included another member of the CQC medicines team.

Briarswood Clinic is an independent slimming clinic in Hilton Road, Canvey Island, Essex. There is a ground floor reception and waiting area and a consulting room. There is parking available nearby. A weight management service has been provided since 1984 for adults aged 18 and over. Patients are weighed at each visit and have an opportunity to discuss progress and problems before seeing the doctor. There is a joining fee and a charge for any medicines supplied. The clinic is open on Wednesdays from 3 pm to 8pm and Fridays from 10am to 3pm.

How we inspected this service

Prior to the inspection we reviewed information about the service, including the previous inspection report and information given to us by the provider. We spoke to the registered manager, receptionist and doctor, and reviewed a range of 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 23 December 2019

This service is rated as Good (Previous inspection in January 2017 was not rated)

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 Briarswood Clinic as part of our inspection programme.

Briarswood clinic provides weight loss services for adults, including the provision of medicines for the purposes of weight loss under a doctor’s supervision.

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. A separate organisation provides a range of non-surgical cosmetic interventions from the same premises.  These services are not within CQC scope of registration and we did not inspect or report on these services.

The clinic manager 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.

24 people provided feedback about the service and their comments were all positive. They told us that it was a professional service provided in an appropriate environment and the staff were friendly, supportive and non-judgemental.

Our key findings were:

• Patients gave positive feedback about the service they received at the clinic.
• The premises were suitable for the service provided.
• Patients were given a welcome pack including information about diet and weight loss, and were given support and encouragement at each visit.
• The prescribing audit had not been repeated to ensure that prescribing remained in line with the clinic’s policy and we saw one record where this was not the case.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Review prescribing to ensure that medicines are only supplied to patients with a BMI of less than 30 when they meet the criteria in the policy, and the rationale is documented.
• Review the audit programme to include clinical audits such as prescribing.
• Consider including a question on the quality of clinical care provided when asking patients for feedback.
• Only supply unlicensed medicines against valid special clinical needs of an individual patient where there is no suitable licensed medicine available.

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