Medical Solutions Inspired was established in 1998 and moved to their current premises in 2017. They offer 24 hour, seven days a week telephone and video GP consultations to employees and clients of membership organisations from across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Where eligible, the service will treat children and family members of clients.

Eligible members are offered a dedicated telephone number and access via a mobile app and website. All requests for GP consultations (whether by telephone or through the app) are handled by a dedicated customer service team who are based at the main office complex in Bracknell, Berkshire. Eligible members can request a call back via telephone or video consultation. The online app and website also offer access to health advice, health monitoring and fitness areas.

The organisation is overseen by a Chief Executive Officer and General Manager, with a Managing Director, Medical Advisors and Finance and Operations Director offering day-to-day management of the service. The provider had recently recruited a Chief Medical Officer. There are various department and organisational managers and team leaders supporting IT, customer service, marketing, quality, client development, operations and HR departments.

There are a number of individual GPs who work for the service. The GPs are on the General Medical Council (GMC) GP Register and on the NHS England National Performers List and work remotely to provide patient consultations. They are supplied with a laptop and an encrypted access code to log into the IT server. The customer service call centre is operated by 23 call centre staff, a Customer Service Manager and Call Centre Supervisor.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as an Independent Healthcare Organisation. The provider is Medical Solutions UK Limited. The registered office is in Upper Berkley Street in London.

We inspected the main operations offices at the following address:

Medical Solutions Inspired, Inspired, Easthampstead Road, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1YQ

The provider had an arrangement with an external pharmacy service to provide prescribed medicines to eligible clients. The service provided an electronic prescription to the pharmacy who then requested payment from the client directly and arranged to send the medicine to the clients preferred address.

How we inspected this service:

Before the inspection we gathered and reviewed information from the provider. During this inspection we spoke to the Registered Manager, Services Manager, Chief Medical Officer, Clinical Advisor and members of the management and administration team.

The pharmacy aspect of the service was not inspected as part of this inspection as pharmacy organisations are outside the scope of CQC.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we 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.