Archived: Transform Hospital Group Birmingham

Updated 17 December 2021

The registered provider of this services is Transform Hospital Group Limited, based at 192 Altrincham Road, Manchester, M22 4RZ. Transform Hospital Group Limited has nine clinic locations and two hospitals.

For this inspection we visited the clinic in Birmingham located at:

Transform Hospital Group Birmingham

38 Highfield Road

Edgbaston

Birmingham

B15 3ED

Transform Hospital Group Birmingham is registered as an independent doctors consulting service for patients over the age of 18 years. It is registered with CQC for one regulated activity: Treatment of disease, disorder or injury. Patients attend the clinic for pre- and post-operative care and assessment for a range of cosmetic and weight loss surgical procedures. For example, gastric band surgery for weight loss and breast enlargement and reduction surgery. The provider also offers other services including Botox injections for the treatment headaches and hyperhidrosis (excessive sweating).

The service is open Monday to Saturday between 9.30am and 6pm. Initial discussions and assessments are completed remotely before a face to face appointment is arranged at the clinic with a consultant surgeon. Other procedures offered at the clinic can be booked directly with the clinic.

The Birmingham clinic is led by a clinic manager, who is also the registered manager for this service. 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.

Other staffing includes three nurses who provide post-operative wound care and undertake blood sampling and swabs when needed. The clinic is also attended by a specialist nurse from the provider’s hospital to carry out gastric band adjustments following surgery. There are also two clinic co-ordinators / receptionists.

The Birmingham clinic is supported by a corporate team. The Consultant Surgeons who attend the clinic work across all the provider’s clinics and hospital sites.

How we inspected this service

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising from the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently. This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews with the registered manager remotely using telephone/video call

• Requesting evidence from the provider

• A shorter site visit

Due to the current pandemic we were unable to obtain comments from patients via our normal process of comment cards. However, we received comments from three patients via the CQC website. All were positive about the service they had received. We also reviewed information from online reviews and any feedback obtained directly by the provider.

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 17 December 2021

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 Transform Hospital Group Birmingham as part of our inspection programme and to provide a rating for the service.

Transform Hospital Group Limited operates from nine clinics across England which are used for initial consultations between patients and surgeons as well as post-operative care. The provider has two independent (private) hospitals located at Bromsgrove and Manchester. Normally patients are able to choose from one of the two hospital where they would like to have their surgical procedure.

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. Transform Hospital Group Birmingham provides a range of non-surgical cosmetic interventions which are not within CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

Our key findings were:

• The service provided care in a way that kept patients safe.
• There were effective systems in place to protect patients from avoidable harm.
• Policies and procedures were in place to support the delivery of safe services.
• The premises and equipment were well maintained and appropriate risk assessments were undertaken to ensure the safety of patients and staff.
• The practice had systems and processes in place to minimise the risk of infection and had put in place additional measures during COVID-19 pandemic.
• Appropriate checks were undertaken when recruiting new staff.
• Staff received appropriate training and competency checks.
• There were systems in place for identifying, acting and learning from incidents and complaints to support service improvement.
• Patient received appropriate support in relation to their chosen treatment.
• Staff treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• There was strong local leadership supported by the wider governance arrangements of the organisation.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Provide safeguarding training at an appropriate level in line with national guidance for nursing staff.
• Improve complaints process to ensure patients receive more timely responses in line with organisational policy.

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