Archived: The Smart Clinics Wandsworth

This service is rated as Good overall. (The service has not been rated previously, but was inspected in February 2018 and was found to be providing care and treatment 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 Smart Clinics Wandsworth as part of our inspection programme.

Smart Medical Clinics Limited provides private general practice services from two separately registered locations in London: The Smart Clinics Wandsworth and The Smart Clinics Brompton Cross. This inspection concerned only The Smart Clinics Wandsworth, located at 15 Bellevue Road, Wandsworth, London, SW17 7EG.

The service is located in a converted residential and business use property with street level access into a reception and waiting area. The building is not fully accessible to wheelchair users and does not have accessible facilities. There are patient toilets, a shower room and baby changing facilities available. Patients requiring additional access support are directed at the time of booking to the providers other location. There are three clinical consultation and treatment rooms, storage areas and an administration office.

Services are available to any fee paying patient. Services can be accessed through an individual, joint or family membership plan or on a pay per use basis.

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 general exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of service and these are set out in Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. At Smart Clinics Wandsworth some services are provided to patients under arrangements made by an insurance company with whom the servicer user holds a policy (other than a standard health insurance policy. These types of arrangements are exempt by law from CQC regulation. Therefore, at Smart Clinics Wandsworth, we were only able to inspect the services which are not arranged for patients by an insurance company with whom the patient holds a policy (other than a standard health insurance policy).

The service has two CQC registered managers who work jointly across both provider locations in service management roles. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) 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.

Sixteen people provided feedback about the service. All sixteen people were wholly positive about the care that they had received.

Our key findings were:

• The service had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents did happen, the service learned from them and improved.
• The service reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Services were provided to meet the needs of patients.
• Patient feedback were received was consistently positive. The clinic also received high levels of positive feedback directly.
• There were clear responsibilities, roles and systems of accountability to support good governance and management.
• There were two areas we suggested that the service should make improvements when we inspected in February 2018. Action was ongoing on both, but was not yet completed.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Implement planned protocols to address risks associated with prescribing controlled drugs, including with patients giving false identity information when booking an appointment.
• Demonstrate quality improvement through follow up audit cycles.

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