The London Skin and Hair Clinic Holborn

Updated 21 February 2023

Background to The London Skin and Hair Clinic (Holborn)

The London Skin and Hair Clinic (Holborn) provides private medical diagnoses and treatments for dermatological conditions and is based in Holborn, Central London.

The service is located on the first floor of an office block and is serviced by a lift. The service is open Monday – Friday 9:00am – 6:00pm and Saturday 9:30am – 5:00pm. The clinical team is comprised of generalist consultant dermatologists alongside specialist dermatologists and healthcare specialists. One of the service’s consultants is also its Medical Director. A practice manager and administrative staff provide administrative support.

The London Skin and Hair Clinic (Holborn) is registered with the Care Quality Commission to carry out the regulated activities of Surgical Procedures, Treatment of disease, disorder or injury and Diagnostic and screening procedures.

Updated 21 February 2023

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

The London Skin and Hair Clinic (Holborn) provides private medical diagnoses and treatments for dermatological conditions. The clinic is located at 233 High Holborn, First Floor, London WC1V 7DN.

The service has a 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.

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The London Skin and Hair Clinic on 19 December 2022 as part of our inspection programme.

Our key findings were:

• People had comprehensive assessments of their needs, which included consideration of clinical needs, mental health, physical health and wellbeing.
• Feedback from patients was positive about the way doctors explained procedures and highly positive about the compassion of the service’s nurse and reception team.
• The provider was not undertaking periodic Infection Prevention and Control audits. Shortly after our inspection we were sent confirming evidence that an audit had taken place.
• We saw evidence of quality improvement activity. For example, a recent internal audit of doctors’ note taking, clinical audits and evidence of discussion of clinical practice and significant events at clinical meetings.
• The service was tailored to meet patients’ needs and delivered in a way to ensure flexibility, choice and continuity of care.
• Practice management arrangements supported the delivery of patient centre care and treatment.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Take action to monitor recently introduced protocols for communicating with patients’ NHS GPs in instances where the service prescribes Isotretinoin. Isotretinoin is a medication prescribed to treat severe acne that should not be used during pregnancy as it can cause birth defects.
• Take action to introduce a written protocol governing its existing patient identification arrangements.
• Take action to introduce a periodic programme of internal note taking audits and systems to invite learning from clinical audits.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

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