Updated 8 December 2017
We carried out a focused inspection of Precious Smile (Watford) on 23 November 2017.
The inspection was led by a CQC inspector who was supported by a second CQC inspector.
We carried out the inspection to follow up concerns we originally identified during a comprehensive inspection at this service on 25 January 2017 under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions.
At a comprehensive inspection we always ask the following five questions to get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment:
- Is it safe?
- Is it effective?
- Is it caring?
- Is it responsive to people’s needs?
- Is it well-led?
When one or more of the five questions is not met we require the service to make improvements and send us an action plan. We then inspect again after a reasonable interval, focusing on the areas where improvement was required.
At the previous comprehensive inspection we found the registered provider was providing safe, effective, caring and responsive care in accordance with relevant regulations. We judged the practice was not providing well-led care in accordance with regulation 17 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can read our report of that inspection by selecting the 'all reports' link for Precious Smile (Watford) on our website www.cqc.org.uk.
We also reviewed aspects of the key questions of safe and effective as we had made recommendations for the provider relating to this key question. We noted that improvements had been made.
Our findings were:
Are services well-led?
We found this practice was providing well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.
The provider had made improvements to rectify the shortfalls and deal with the regulatory breach we found at our inspection on 25 January 2017.