The Derma Clinic Kent Ltd

Updated 19 October 2023

The registered provider is:

The Derma Clinic Kent Ltd

5 Tannery Wharf

Tannery Square

Canterbury

CT1 2FN

The Derma Clinic Kent Ltd is a private company providing aesthetic skin treatments as well as medical treatment for a limited range of medical conditions to patients over the age of 18 years. There is a director/clinical nurse manager, a lead nurse and a clinic co-ordinator.

The clinic is open Tuesday to Thursday 10am to 2pm, Friday 9am to 4pm, and alternate Sundays 10am to 2pm.

We reviewed information from the provider for example staffing levels, training records, audits and policies.

We talked with the provider, interviewed staff, reviewed documents and records and inspected the facilities and the building.

How we inspected this 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 19 October 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? – GoodWe carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Derma Clinic on 27 June 2023. This was the first inspection of this service since registration with CQC on 8 February 2022.

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. The Derma Clinic provides a range of non-surgical cosmetic interventions. For example, skin tightening, under eye correction of dark circles and puffiness and derma fillers which are not within CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

The 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:

• Policies and procedures were comprehensive, up to date and relevant to the service.
• All staff had the appropriate level of training relevant to their role.
• Consent was sought and recorded appropriately for each contact with the patient.
• Patient feedback was positive about their care experience.
• The service was supportive of patients’ needs and patients were able to access the service.
• The service had systems and processes to safely administer and record medicines. However, medicines not stored in a fridge did not have temperature monitoring completed.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The provider should ensure it monitors ambient room temperatures in areas where medicines are stored.
• The provider should only supply unlicensed medicines against valid special clinical needs of an individual patient where there is no suitable licensed medicine available.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Healthcare