VitaSmile

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

We found this practice was not providing effective care in accordance with the relevant regulations. We will be following up on our concerns to ensure the provider has made the required improvements.

During our inspection of this key question, we found concerns related to:

the completeness of patient care records,

the practice not having an effective system to monitor patients’ referrals to other dental or health care professionals,

the practice having an ineffective system to keep dental professionals up to date with current evidence-based practice.

These concerns were in breach of Regulations 18 (Staffing) and 17 (Good governance) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

You can find more details of our concerns in the detailed findings below.

Find out what we look at when we assess this area in our information about our new Single assessment framework.

The judgement for Assessing needs is based on the latest evidence we assessed for the Effective key question.

We looked at 6 dental care records from service users seen at the service. Some of these records were missing key details including an updated medical history, intraoral and soft tissue checks, extraoral examination, Basic Periodontal Examination (BPE), risk assessment and diagnosis/prognosis.

Staff told us that they obtained patients’ consent for treatment in line with legislation. However, evidence that consent had been obtained was not consistently recorded in patient care records.

The practice prescribed antibiotics to patients. However, prescribing was not logged and the practice did not carry out antimicrobial prescribing audits to monitor and measure prescribing practices against current evidence-based guidance.

Patients were referred to primary and secondary care specialists for treatment the practice did not provide. This included referring patients with suspected cancer under the national faster diagnosis pathways. However, improvements should be made to ensure that effective systems were in place to monitor and track whether referrals were received by the intended recipients and acted upon in a timely manner, particularly for urgent referrals.

The principal dentist did not demonstrate up-to-date knowledge of relevant legislation and guidance, including, but not limited to, infection prevention and control, consent, Gillick competency, and the Mental Capacity Act. This impacted their ability to provide effective clinical oversight of the service.

The judgement for How staff, teams and services work together is based on the latest evidence we assessed for the Effective key question.

The judgement for Supporting people to live healthier lives is based on the latest evidence we assessed for the Effective key question.

The judgement for Monitoring and improving outcomes is based on the latest evidence we assessed for the Effective key question.

The judgement for Consent to care and treatment is based on the latest evidence we assessed for the Effective key question.