Heathrow Medical Services

Updated 26 May 2021

Heathrow Medical Services is an independent service and offers travel health consultations, travel and non-travel vaccines and travel medicines such as anti-malarial medicines to children and adults. The service is also a registered yellow fever vaccination center. The clinic has continued to be open during the the Covid-19 pandemic period. However, there has been a reduced demand for travel vaccines in the last year due to the pandemic.

Services are provided from: Heathrow Medical Services, Weekly House, 575-583 Bath Road, West Drayton, UB7 0EH. We visited this location as part of the inspection on 30 April 2021.

Online services can be accessed from the service website: www.heathrowmedical.com.

The service is open between 9am and 4pm on Monday to Friday. Telephone lines are open between 8.30am and 5pm Monday to Friday.

At the time of our inspection the service staff comprised of a GP who is the service’s registered manager and nominated individual, a specialised travel vaccines nurse , an operations manager and other administrative office staff. On the day of the inspection we met with the operations manager, specialist travel nurse and the GP.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury. This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of the services it provides.

How we inspected this service

We reviewed information sent to us by the provider remotely prior to attending the site to reduce the time spent on site in line with our Covid- 19 inspecting guidance. We spoke with the clinical director, an operations manager and travel specialist nurse. We looked at records related to patient assessments and the provision of care and treatment. We also reviewed documentation related to the management of the service. We reviewed patient feedback received by the service. We reviewed staff written feedback collected on the day of the inspection.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following three questions:

• Is it safe?

• Is it effective?

• Is it well led?

Updated 26 May 2021

This service is rated as Good overall. (Previous inspection May 2019 – Requires improvement)

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 focused inspection at Heathrow Medical Services to follow up on previous breaches of regulations. During this inspection we inspected Safe, Effective and Well led.

CQC inspected the service in May 2019. We rated the service as requires improvement overall due to concerns with fridge temperature checks, recruitment checks and gaps in staff safeguarding training which were not always monitored appropriately.

We checked these areas as part of this focused inspection and found the concerns had been resolved.

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 general exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of service and these are set out in Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. At Heathrow Medical Services, services are provided to patients under arrangements made by their employer. These types of arrangements are exempt by law from CQC regulation. Therefore, we were only able to inspect the services which are not arranged for patients by their employers.

Heathrow Medical Services is a private service providing travel health advice, travel and non-travel vaccines and travel medicines such as anti-malarial medicines to children and adults. In addition, the clinic holds a licence to administer yellow fever vaccines.

The clinical director 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:

• There was an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events.
• Risks to patients were always assessed and well managed, including those relating to medicines, safeguarding and recruitment checks.
• The clinic had policies and procedures to governern activity.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the Duty of Candour.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to follow guidance on managing patients with severe infections including sepsis.

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