During an assessment of Diagnostic and screening services
The date of the assessment 23 April 2026 .
Elite Community Ultrasound provides private pregnancy scans, fertility assessments, health ultrasound scans, vascular imaging, musculoskeletal scans and blood tests. The service is located on a business park in Ashford, Kent. The location comprises office and clinic facilities and serves as the base for both administrative and clinical operations.
We carried out this comprehensive assessment because the service had not previously been assessed since registering with CQC in February 2024. This assessment focused on the assessment service group of diagnostic and screening procedures.
We rated the service as requires improvement overall.
People using the service provided positive feedback about their care and experience. Staff were described as caring, compassionate and responsive to people's needs. The service provided timely access to diagnostic appointments and had developed additional support and information for people receiving unexpected or distressing scan findings. The service also had effective referral and escalation processes to ensure people were directed to appropriate healthcare services when their needs could not be met by the service or when urgent follow-up care was required.
Staff felt supported by the registered manager and demonstrated a commitment to providing person-centred care. The registered manager was actively seeking opportunities to develop and improve the service in response to people's needs.
However, we identified a breach of the legal regulation relating to good governance and safeguarding.
The provider had not established sufficiently effective governance systems and processes to assess, monitor and improve the quality and safety of the service. For example, the provider had not implemented a structured programme of clinical audits, including audits of ultrasound examinations and reports. Information governance arrangements were not always clearly defined, and identified information governance risks were not reflected on the service risk register. Some policies had not been sufficiently tailored to the service, and systems for identifying, monitoring and managing risks were not always effective.
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