North Street Dental Care

Updated 22 November 2016

We undertook a follow up inspection of North Street Dental Care on 19 October 2016. This inspection was carried out to check that improvements to meet legal requirements planned by the practice after our comprehensive inspection on 31 March 2016 had been made. We inspected the practice against one of the five questions we ask about services: is the service safe. This is because the service was not meeting some of the legal requirements in relation to this question.

The inspection was carried out by a CQC assistant inspector who had access to advice from a dental specialist advisor.

During the follow up inspection, we reviewed information sent to us by the practice that demonstrated how the concerns identified during the comprehensive inspection had been addressed.

Updated 22 November 2016

We carried out a follow up inspection on 19 October 2016 of North Street Dental Care. We had undertaken an announced comprehensive inspection of this service on 31 March 2016 as part of our regulatory functions and during this inspection we found a breach of the legal requirements.

After the comprehensive inspection, the practice wrote to us to say what they would do to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breach. This report only covers our findings in relation to those requirements. We checked whether they had followed their action plan to confirm that they now met the legal requirements.

We reviewed the practice against one of the five questions we ask about services: is the service safe?

We have not revisited North Street Dental Care as part of this review because the practice was able to demonstrate that they were meeting the standards without the need for a visit.

A copy of the report from our last comprehensive inspection can be found by selecting the 'all reports' link for North Street Dental Care on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Our findings were:

Are services safe ?

We found that this practice was providing safe care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Background

North Street Dental Care provides predominately NHS dental services with private treatment options for patients. The practice has three consulting and treatment rooms, has three dentists who are supported by four dental nurses. The practice is managed by a practice manager with a principal dentist supporting the whole team.

Surgery hours are Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. There are arrangements in place to ensure patients receive urgent medical assistance when the practice is closed.

Our key findings were:

• The practice had reviewed their infection prevention and control procedures and protocols giving due regard to guidelines issued by the Department of Health - Health Technical Memorandum 01-05: decontamination in primary care dental practices and The Health and Social Care Act 2008: ‘Code of Practice about the prevention and control of infections and related guidance’.
• Training on adult and paediatric basic life support and the use of a automated external defibrillator (AED) had been undertaken by all members of staff.
• Systems had been implemented to ensure that single use items were disposed of in line with the manufacturer’s instructions and only used on one patient.
• We were assured that the practice no longer used an unregistered laboratory for any dental prosthesis.
• References for all members of staff had been obtained following our comprehensive inspection.

There were areas where the provider could make improvements and should:

• Ensure that all staff undertake a serum conversion to determine their level of immunity to Hepatitis B.
• Revisit their infection control audit to reflect the fact that a washer disinfector is not used in the practice.