Dr Linea Medical

This service is rated as Choose a rating 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 Dr Linea Medical 03 October 2023, as part of our inspection programme. Dr Linea Medical is registered under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to provide the following regulated activities:

• Diagnostic and screening procedures
• Services in slimming clinics
• Treatment of disease, disorder, or injury.

This service provides a range of non-surgical facial aesthetics, including medical skin care treatments, anti-wrinkle injections, dermal filler services, Botox for medical and non-medical conditions, and slimming treatment, these are a mixture of regulated and non-regulated 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. Therefore, we only inspected and reported on the services which are within the scope of registration with the CQC.

Dr Linea is the Registered Manager for the 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.

Our key findings were:

• The provider carried out risk assessments to keep staff and patients safe.
• The provider had systems to keep clinicians up to date with current clinical and evidence-based guidance.
• Staff treated patients with compassion, respect, and kindness, this was evidenced in the comments left by patients.
• We found reviews about the service online and during the onsite inspection, these showed that patients were consistently positive about the service, and described staff as professional, helpful, and caring.
• The service encouraged feedback from patients which was positive and included the timely access to the service.
• The service had policies, and procedures for assurance they were safe, effective, and well-led. For example, environmental checks, and oversight of infection prevention and control.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to monitor the recently produced cold chain policy and daily recordings.
• Identify and record events as significant incidents.
• Improve the monitoring of the cleaning procedures.
• Continue to display safety information prominently to support and inform patients and staff.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

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