BG Medical Clinic Also known as Romford, Medical Clinic

Updated 21 September 2023

BG Medical Clinic is located at 48 North Street, Romford, London, RM1 1BH, in the London borough of Havering. It is an independent provider of medical services and offers a full range of private general practice services predominantly to the Bulgarian community.

The provider is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to deliver the regulated activities: treatment of disease, disorder or injury, diagnostic and screening procedures and family planning

Services provided include: general practitioner services; cardiology; orthopaedic; ENT (ear, nose and throat); paediatric; endocrinology; general surgery and gynaecology consultation services; ultrasound scans; dressings; blood and other laboratory tests. Patients can be referred to other services for diagnostic imaging and specialist care.

The service is open Monday to Friday from 9am to 6pm; Saturday 9am to 4pm and Sunday 10am to 2pm. They do not offer out of hours care. The provider’s website can be accessed at www.bgmedicalclinic.com

How we inspected this 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 21 September 2023

This service is rated as Inadequate overall. This is the first inspection of this service.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Inadequate

Are services effective? – Inadequate

Are services caring? – Requires improvement

Are services responsive? – Inadequate

Are services well-led? – Inadequate

We carried out an unannounced inspection at BG Medical Clinic under Section 60 of the

Health and Social Care Act 2008 due to concerns that dental services were being carried out at the service location without being appropriately registered.

At this inspection we took a primary medical services (PMS) and dental team to check whether the service was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008. This combined report includes evidence gathered by the PMS and dental teams.

Following the inspection, we undertook civil enforcement action, under the Health and Social Care Act 2008, by:

• Imposing an urgent suspension, of six-weeks duration, by issuing a s.31 notice under the Health and Social Care Act 2008.
• Issuing warning notices regarding Regulations 12 (Safe care and treatment) and 17 (Good governance).

BG Medical Clinic Limited is an independent provider of medical services and offers a full range of private general practice services predominantly to the Bulgarian community. This is the first inspection of the service.

Dr Andrean Damyanov 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 provider did not have an adequate clinical system in place to enable safe prescribing and patient reviews.
• The provider did not submit evidence of appropriate medical indemnity insurance for all clinical staff who worked at the service.
• The provider did not have a system or policy in place to safely manage patient safety alerts and follow-up patients who may be affected by them.
• The provider did not have a system in place to safely manage patients who had been prescribed medicines.
• The provider did not have a system or policy in place to safely manage patients who had a long term condition.
• The provider did not have a system in place to safely manage laboratory test results for patients who attended the service.
• The provider told us that a dentistry, including surgical procedures, was not provided, at the location. However, we reviewed evidence to demonstrate that dentistry, including evidence of surgical procedures, had been carried out at this service.
• The provider did not have a system or policy in place to safely manage recruitment, including disclosure and barring service (DBS) checks.
• The provider could not demonstrate there was oversight of their patient list and relative risk regarding their patient population group.
• The provider did not have a system or policy in place to safely manage emergency medicines and equipment.
• There was limited evidence of a system and processes in place regarding safeguarding children and vulnerable adults.
• Clinical records and ultrasound images were not maintained appropriately from a legal-medical perspective.
• There was an overall lack of clinical governance and oversight for patient care.
• The provider did not have a system in place to safely manage significant events.
• The provider did not have a system in place to safely manage patients complaints.
• The provider did not have a system in place to drive quality improvement, including clinical audit.
• Some staff did not have the required training, knowledge and experience to carry out the roles that were undertaken.

We identified regulations that were not being met and the provider must make improvements regarding:

• Care and treatment must be provided in a safe way for service users.
• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.

(Please see the specific details on action required at the end of this report).

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to review and update service policies regularly, in line with relevant national guidance.
• Actively seek patient engagement and feedback from those who attend the service.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services