Visa Medicals Ltd

Updated 12 September 2023

Visa Medicals Ltd is an independent health service that occupies rooms on the first floor of Bentinck Mansions, a building managed by an independent estates contractor. Its opening hours are 9.00am to 4.30pm, Monday to Friday . Their website address is www.visamedicals.co.uk

The service is operated by Visa Medicals Ltd which is an independent healthcare company that mainly provides medicals for immigration purposes, for clients applying for visas to Canada, the United States and the UK. The service nurses assess clients’ vaccination status for visa purposes.

The service has an X-ray Department which carries out screening chest X-rays for immigration purposes which falls within the scope of CQC regulation.

The service is led by three senior panel physicians and a senior panel radiographer who leads a team of three radiographers. There are three practice nurses, a practice manager and a team of administrative staff.

Visa Medicals Ltd are registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to provide:

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

How we inspected this service

The inspection was completed by a CQC Lead Inspector and a GP specialist advisor who spoke with staff and completed records reviews at the location.

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 12 September 2023

This service is rated as Good overall. (At the previous inspection in February 2019 the service was not rated).

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 Visa Medicals Ltd as part of our inspection programme, to check whether the service was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

The service was previously inspected in February 2019, and we found it was providing care in accordance with the relevant regulations. At the time of inspecting this service in 2019, CQC did not have the statutory powers to rate the service.

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.

Our key findings were:

• The service had comprehensive policies and systems to keep people safe. Policies and procedures were maintained in an organised way and easily accessible to staff.
• There were safe procedures for managing medical emergencies, including access to emergency medicines and equipment.
• The premises were clean and well maintained. There were systems in place to reduce the risk and spread of infection. However, the system to manage infection prevention and control (IPC) needed tightening. For example, there was no cleaning checklist which detailed all the cleaning tasks of areas within the service, at the frequency required.
• Records were written and managed in a way that keep people safe. Staff helped patients to be involved in decisions about their care and treatment.
• Patients were treated with kindness, respect and compassion. Feedback from patients was positive about the way staff treat people.
• The service had a complaint policy and procedures in place. We found that complaints were dealt with in a timely manner and with openness and transparency.
• The provider had quality improvement processes in place. We saw staff had completed audits to monitor quality and improve outcomes for patients.
• The service had a culture which centred on the needs and experience of people who use services.
• The processes for providing all staff at every level with the development they need, required improvement. Some staff had not received an annual appraisal in the last year. There was no formal system of appraisals which included a review of training needs for staff.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Maintain a cleaning checklist.
• Carry out an annual appraisal for all staff.
• Train all non-clinical staff in sepsis-awareness.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care