Archived: The Slimming Clinic

Updated 13 February 2020

The Slimming Clinic provides weight loss treatment and services, including prescribed medicines, dietary and lifestyle advice, to support weight reduction. The clinic is located on the ground floor of a unit in Plymouth city centre. Staff include a clinic manager and two part-time doctors. The clinic is open on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

How we inspected this service

Prior to the inspection we reviewed information about this service and other services operated by this provider, including the previous inspection report and information from the provider. We spoke to the clinic manager, a member of the clinical staff and reviewed a range of documents.

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 13 February 2020

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Slimming Clinic, Plymouth to rate the service for the provision of safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services as part of our current inspection programme.

The Slimming Clinic, Plymouth provides weight loss services, including prescribed medicines, dietary and lifestyle advice to support weight reduction.

The clinic manager is in the process of making an application to be the registered manager. The previous registered manager left the service within the last 6 months. 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.

15 people provided feedback about the service via comment cards. The comments were all positive. Comments about the staff included being polite, helpful and encouraging. The comments about the clinic included providing a non-judgemental service, encouraging and being delivered in a clean, tidy and organised environment. Other comments received included being provided with lots of relevant information and being supportive during difficult phases of treatment.

Our key findings were :

• Prescribing and record keeping were in line with the parent company’s policies.
• The clinic was in a good state of repair, clean and tidy.
• Staff provided information and a supportive service to make patients feel comfortable with their treatment.
• Learning from other services within the parent company was shared and implemented.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Only supply unlicensed medicines against valid special clinical needs of an individual patient where there is no suitable licensed medicine available.
• To review the current policy around transfer of information from old style record cards to the new style record cards for existing patients.

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