Lakeside Medical Diagnostics

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• 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 looked for evidence that people’s care, treatment, and support achieved good outcomes based on the best available evidence.

We looked for evidence that people and communities had the best possible outcomes because their needs were assessed.

We checked that people’s care, support and treatment reflected these needs and any protected equality characteristics, ensuring people were at the centre of their care.

We also looked for evidence that leaders instilled a culture of improvement, where understanding current outcomes and exploring best practices was part of their everyday work.

At our last assessment, we did not rate this key question. At this assessment, this key question has been rated as good.

We have not awarded this service a score for Effective.

Find out about when we will not publish a key question score and what we look at when we assess Effective.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service made sure people’s care and treatment were effective by assessing and reviewing their health, care, wellbeing and communication needs with them. We reviewed 10 patient care records; most had a completed and comprehensive health assessment.

Staff communicated with patients in ways that supported their understanding of their care and treatment.

Information submitted post assessment showed that the service followed the NHS Accessible Information Standard. Staff arranged interpreters and provided alternative communication formats when required. Clinicians adapted their communication to meet each patient’s individual needs, ensuring patients could understand and participate in their care.

The service provided services to NHS patients and patients could not self-refer.

We scored the service as 2. The evidence showed some shortfalls. The service did not always plan and deliver people’s care and treatment with them, including what was important and mattered to them.

The service participated in clinical audits, benchmarking and quality improvement initiatives.

Audits covered areas such as report turnaround times, image quality, patient identification, attendance rates and documentation standards. Information submitted post assessment demonstrated that the service took actions following audit reviews.

Policies submitted post inspection lacked references from professional organisations such as The British Medical Ultrasound Society (BMUS) and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Therefore, we were not assured that staff had access to current and properly governed documents.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service worked well across teams and services to support people. They made sure people only needed to tell their story once by sharing their assessment of needs when people moved between different services.

Staff at all levels worked well together to ensure patients had a positive experience at the service. Staff explained that if there were shortages in any area, other members of the team would step in to help.

The service had direct access to electronic information held by community services, including GPs. This allowed staff to access up‑to‑date information about patients, such as details of their current medicines.

The service communicated reports to GPs through an electronic system. For GPs who did not use this system, staff scanned the reports and sent them via secure email. Ultrasound images were also uploaded to an electronic system that healthcare professionals could access to support accurate treatment decisions.

The service maintained effective relationships with external health providers and provided clear examples of how it escalated urgent findings when recognised.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service supported people to manage their health and wellbeing to maximise their independence, choice and control. The service supported people to live healthier lives and where possible, reduce their future needs for care and support.

The service provided patients with a wide range of health‑promotion leaflets such as cancer screening services and stroke awareness at the primary care centre where the service operated.

We scored the service as 3. The evidence showed a good standard. The service routinely monitored people’s care and treatment to continuously improve it. They ensured that outcomes were positive and consistent, and that they met both clinical expectations and the expectations of people themselves.

The service monitored patients who did not attend (DNA) appointments. Staff explained the process to manage patients who had missed an appointment including establishing the reason why they were unable to attend.

The service had developed standardised pathways for the most common referrals. These pathways set out the minimum image sets, measurements, and reporting standards required for each examination in line with current British Medical Ultrasound Society (BMUS) guidelines. This ensured consistent practice across all referrals.

All sonographers underwent regular peer‑review audits. These retrospective audits assessed the quality of the ultrasound scans produced and evaluated the quality of the sonographers’ reports. However, results of these reports were not provided.

We scored the service as 2. The evidence showed some shortfalls. The service did not always tell people about their rights around consent and did not always respect their rights when delivering care and treatment.

We reviewed 10 medical records, all of which contained completed written consent. We observed staff explaining the procedure and obtaining written consent from a patient undergoing an ultrasound scan.