Archived: The Slimming Clinic

Updated 5 March 2019

National Slimming and Cosmetic Clinics, Bradford [www.nscclinics.co.uk] is a private slimming clinic for adults. The service operates from a ground floor consulting room, with separate reception and waiting area on North Parade in Bradford. The clinic is open on Wednesdays from 9am to 1:30pm, Thursdays from 1pm to 5:45pm and on Friday and Saturday mornings.

There is a clinic manager, two receptionists and two regular doctors who carry out patient consultations. A third doctor provides cover for leave. One doctor was available at each clinic session.

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of National Slimming and Cosmetic Clinics Bradford on 16 January 2019. Our inspection team was led by a CQC pharmacist specialist supported by a second CQC pharmacist specialist. During the inspection, we spoke with staff, made observations, and reviewed 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 5 March 2019

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection on 16 January 2019 to ask the service the following key questions; Are services safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led?

Our findings were:

Are services safe?

We found that this service was not providing safe care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services effective?

We found that this service was providing effective care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services caring?

We found that this service was providing caring services in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services responsive?

We found that this service was providing responsive care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services well-led?

We found that this service was providing well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the service was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

CQC inspected the service on 20 April 2018 and asked the provider to make improvements regarding establishing effective systems and processes to ensure good governance, in particular relating to recruitment. We checked these areas as part of this comprehensive inspection and found this had been resolved.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of the provision of advice or treatment by, or under the supervision of, a medical practitioner, including the prescribing of medicines for the purposes of weight reduction. At National Slimming and Cosmetic Clinics, Bradford the aesthetic cosmetic treatments that are also provided are exempt by law from CQC regulation. Therefore, we were only able to inspect the treatment for weight reduction but not the aesthetic cosmetic 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.

49 people completed CQC comment cards prior to our inspection, and these were all positive. Patients told us staff were friendly and helpful and treated them with respect, and the facilities were clean and comfortable.

Our key findings were:

• Staff were caring, supportive, and treated patients with dignity and respect.
• Doctors followed the clinic prescribing manual and recorded the rationale for prescribing decisions.
• There were arrangements in place to audit medical records and treatment outcomes, however the audit outcomes and any actions were not clearly documented and shared to promote continuous service improvement.
• There was a comprehensive set of policies and procedures governing all activities, these were kept under review.
• The clinic was clean and tidy and a legionella risk assessment had been undertaken
• Customer satisfaction surveys were completed to help ensure the service was responsive to peoples needs and there was a procedure in place for handling concerns and complaints

We identified regulations that were not being met and the provider must:

• Ensure that all prescribed medicines are labelled as part of the dispensing process prior to supply to each patient.
• Ensure that the medicines refrigerator maintains the appropriate temperature for the safe storage of medicines.

You can see full details of the regulations not being met at the end of this report.

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

• Review and update the patient medicine information leaflet to provide clarity around situations where urgent medical attention should be sought.
• Review the process for documenting and sharing actions and areas for improvement identified through audit, to promote continuous improvement.
• Review the electronic record keeping to ensure that accurate and up-to-date recruitment and training records are maintained for all staff in accordance with clinic procedures.
• Only supply unlicensed medicines against valid special clinical needs of an individual patient where there is no suitable licensed medicine available and ensure that all dispensed medicines are fully labelled.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP Chief Inspector of General Practice