Archived: Hunter House Clinic

Updated 8 June 2022

• The name of the registered provider is Hunter House Clinic. The registered address is The Holt, Boulge Road, Hasketon, Woodbridge, IP13 6LA.
• The provider has one registered location, based at 53 Barrack Square, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich, IP5 3RF.
• The provider first registered with CQC in 2019 and is registered to provide services to adults only. It is registered to provide Surgical procedures and Treatment of disease, disorder or injury. The service provides a range of cosmetic treatments, most of which are out of scope. However, the service offers thread lifts and Botox for the treatment of hyperhidrosis and has recently started providing Saxenda for obesity which require registration under the regulated activities of treatment of disease and disorder and surgical procedures as they are carried out by a listed healthcare professional..
• The clinic is located in a T-shaped brick building unit. Hunter House Clinic leases two ground floor wings of this building. The remainder is either shared by all building tenants for example toilets, foyer and kitchen, or dedicated to two other lease holders. There is free parking at this clinic.
• The service is open Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 9am to 6pm, Thursdays from 9am to 7pm and Saturdays from 8am to 4pm. The service is accessed through either requesting a call back on the service website, or by booking an appointment by telephone.
• The providers website is www.hunterhouseclinic.com

How we inspected this service

Before the inspection, we asked the provider to send us some information, which was reviewed prior to the site visit. We also reviewed information held by the CQC on our internal systems.

During the inspection, we spoke with members of staff who were present, including the Registered Manager and the office manager. We made observations of the facilities and service provision and reviewed documents, records and information held by 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 8 June 2022

This service is rated as Inadequate overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Inadequate

Are services effective? – Requires improvement

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Requires improvement

Are services well-led? – Inadequate

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of Hunter House Clinic. This provider had not been previously inspected.

The service provides anti-wrinkle, laser and beauty treatments, some of which are in scope such as PDO (Polydioxanone) thread lifting, administration of liraglutide injections (Saxenda) and treatment of hyperhidrosis, some which are out of scope for example beauty treatments. 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. We only inspected and reported on the services which are within the scope of registration with the CQC. The only staff who were associated with the delivery of regulated activities were the provider and a receptionist. There were other staff on the premises who provided the non-regulated activities.

The owner of Hunter House Clinic 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.

Due to the current pandemic we were unable to obtain comments from patients via our normal process of asking the provider to place comment cards within the service location. We saw from reviews on the provider’s website and from google reviews that patients were consistently positive about the service, describing staff as professional and helpful. We did not speak with patients on the day, as there were none attending for regulated activities.

Our key findings were:

• The service did not have adequate safety systems and processes in place, or oversight of these, to keep people safe.
• Staff treated patients with compassion, respect and kindness and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The service encouraged and valued feedback from patients. Feedback was positive about the service.
• The leadership and governance arrangements at the service were not effective. There was little understanding of the management of risks, a lack of assurance and failures in the systems and processes to ensure safe, effective, responsive and well led services.
• The complaints process was ineffective.

The areas where the provider must make improvements as they are in breach of regulations are:

• 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:

• Develop procedures for dealing with major incidents.

I am placing this service in special measures. Services placed in special measures will be inspected again within six months. If insufficient improvements have been made such that there remains a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall, we will take action in line with our enforcement procedures to begin the process of preventing the provider from operating the service. This will lead to cancelling their registration or to varying the terms of their registration within six months if they do not improve.

The service will be kept under review and if needed could be escalated to urgent enforcement action. Where necessary, another inspection will be conducted within a further six months, and if there is not enough improvement we will move to close the service by adopting our proposal to remove this location or cancel the provider’s registration.

Special measures will give people who use the service the reassurance that the care they get should improve.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care