Archived: Cosmedics Clinics Putney

Updated 22 August 2019

Cosmedics Clinics Putney provides private medical, cosmetic and beauty therapy services under the trading name Cosmedics skin clinics located at 4 Disraeli Road, London, SW15 2DS. The service is registered with the CQC to provide the regulated activities of Treatment of disease disorder and injury and surgical procedures in respect of the varicose vein treatment service provided. Other services offered but not regulated by the CQC include beauty therapy services, injected skin fillers, mole, wart and skin tag removal, and laser treatments such as hair removal.

The service is located in a converted property with stairs and a ramp leading into a reception and separate waiting area. There are patient toilet facilities; however these are not suitable for wheelchair users. The service has beauty therapy rooms, consultation rooms and a treatment room with separate recovery area used for vein treatment activities. There are also staff areas, a basement storage area and an administration office.

Services are available to any fee paying patient on a pay per use basis. Services are available by appointment only from 10am Monday to Sunday and 9am on Saturdays. Appointments are available until 6pm on Monday and Friday, until 8pm Tuesday – Thursday, until 5pm on Saturday and 4pm on Sunday. Where requested, appointments are offered at the providers other location in central London.

Their website address is: http://cosmedics.co.uk/  

The service is registered with CQC to undertake the following regulated activities:

• Treatment of Disease, Disorder or Injury
• Diagnostic and Screening Services.
• Surgical procedures

We carried out this comprehensive inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the service was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

As part of the preparation for the inspection we also reviewed information provided to us by the provider.

During the inspection we asked people using the service to record their views on comment cards, interviewed staff, observed staff interaction with patients and reviewed documents relating to the service.

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 22 August 2019

This service is rated as Good overall.

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 Cosmedics Clinics Putney on the 1 July 2019 as part of our inspection programme.

Cosmedics Clinics Putney provides private medical, cosmetic and beauty therapy services.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of regulated activities and services and these are set out in Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. Cosmedics Clinics Harley Street provides a range of non-surgical cosmetic interventions, for example anti-ageing injections and dermal fillers which are not within CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

Dr Ross Perry 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.

Our key findings were:

• The service had systems and processes were in place to keep people safe. There was a fire policy, procedure and regular equipment checks and drills, and all staff had completed fire training. The service lead was the lead member of staff for safeguarding and had undertaken adult safeguarding to level two and child safeguarding training to level three.
• The service did not stock all the recommended emergency medicines at the premises and no formal risk assessment had been completed to support this decision. A formal risk assessment was sent to us shortly after the inspection.
• The service learned and made improvements when things went wrong. However, we found that there were examples of events that could usefully have been considered as significant events that had not been formally reviewed, and not all significant events had been fully documented.
• The service had a system in place to share safety alerts with to all members of staff. We heard examples of action taken as a result, but this was not recorded.
• There was quality improvement activity, although this was not consistent across the whole service.
• Patients were able to access care and treatment from the clinic within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• There was a complaints procedure in place and information on how to complain was readily available.
• Governance arrangements were in place. There were clear responsibilities, roles and systems of accountability to support good governance and management.
• The service had systems and processes in place to ensure that patients were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in decisions about their care and treatment.
• The service had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• The service had systems in place to collect and analyse feedback from patients.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Review the systems for the dissemination of safety alerts and the logging of any actions taken, and for ensuring that all significant events are identified and fully recorded.
• Review measures of effectiveness to develop comprehensive measures across all of the services offered.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care