Head Office Also known as Head Office Smart Start Health

Updated 6 September 2019

Head Office (Smart Start Minds Ltd) is a provider of services which delivers bespoke educational concentration training and a holistic private healthcare service to patients and clients. The service aim is to provide educational training and exceptional, comprehensive, private healthcare to improve the health, wellbeing and lives of the clients/patients registered with their service. The service provides two distinct services of educational concentration training/ neurofeedback programmes and a private doctor service. Our inspection focused on the regulated activities of the private doctor service offered by the provider.

The service is a mobile doctor (two doctors) service. One of the doctors specialises in private general private doctor services, whilst the second doctor is a consultant who specialises in conditions relating to mental health and neurocognitive disorders. The administrative base for the service is located at the address named on the report. Consultations and assessments are conducted either in the patient’s home or in a clinical setting where the service has an agreement to hold clinics on a sessional basis. The service also employs a part-time medical secretary and a part-time accounts manager.

The service 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.

Head Office (Smart Start Minds Ltd) is registered to conduct the following regulated activities:-

• Treatment of disease,disorder and injury
• Diagnostic and screening procedures

How we inspected this service

During our visit we:

• Spoke with staff (two doctors, one of which is the service/registered manager)
• Received feedback from patients using Care Quality Commission web link ‘share your experience’
• Reviewed personnel files, practice policies and procedures and other records concerned with running the service

• In addition, we reviewed information sent to us from the provider prior to the inspection.

  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 6 September 2019

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Head Office (Smart Start Minds Ltd). This inspection was undertaken as part of our programme of inspecting independent doctor services registered with the Commission. This inspection was the first rated inspection of this service.

We conducted an unrated inspection of this provider in May 2018. At this time, we found the service to have effective systems and processes to ensure good governance of the service, that clinical staff at the service had the skills and knowledge to be able to deliver care and treatment effectively and safely, and patients were provided with information, advice and guidance to support them to live healthier lives.

We received 13 ‘share your experience’ comments as part of our inspection of the service. On the day of inspection, the service did not have any patients and as a result we did not speak with any patients.

Our key findings were:

• Staff had been trained with the skills and knowledge to deliver care and treatment. Clinical staff were aware of current evidence-based guidance.
• Information about services and how to complain was available. Information about the range of services and fees were available.
• The service conducted quality improvement activity to improve patient outcomes.
• There was a system in place to receive safety alerts issued by relevant government departments.
• Clinical information with other relveant healthcare providers was shared in a timely manner (subject to patient consent).
• The service focused on outcome-based patient solutions.
• The service had an administrative governance structure in place, which was adhered to through a range of policies and procedures which were reviewed regularly.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• To document the risk assessment for the need of emergency medicines currently held by the service.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGPChief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care