Archived: The Slimming Clinic

Updated 27 March 2020

The Slimming Clinic, Hounslow is one of a national chain of clinics run by Slim Holdings Ltd. It provides private weight loss services to adults aged 18 and over including prescribed medicines, dietary and lifestyle advice. The clinic is situated on the second floor of a building, without step free access in Hounslow town centre and is open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

How we inspected this service

Prior to the inspection we reviewed information about this service and other services operated by this provider. This included the previous inspection report and information from the provider. We spoke to the clinic manager and a member of the clinical staff and reviewed a range of 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 27 March 2020

This service is rated as Good overall. (Previous inspection February 2018 - Not rated)

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 The Slimming Clinic, Hounslow to rate the service for the provision of safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services as part of our current inspection programme.

The Slimming Clinic, Hounslow provides weight loss services, including prescribed medicines, and dietary and lifestyle advice to support weight reduction under the supervision of a doctor.

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.

17 people provided feedback about the service via comment cards. The comments were all positive. Comments about the staff included being polite, helpful and encouraging. The comments about the clinic included providing an encouraging service, ease of access to appointments and being delivered in a clean and tidy environment.

Our key findings were:

•Prescribing and record keeping were in line with the parent company’s policies.

•The clinic was in a good state of repair, clean and tidy.

•Learning from other services within the parent company was shared and implemented.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

•Make arrangements to improve privacy in the consultation room during a consultation.

•Only supply unlicensed medicines against valid special clinical needs of an individual patient where there is no suitable licensed medicine available.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care