The Health Doctors

Updated 15 February 2019

The Health Doctors Ltd began operating in 2003 offering medical care combined with complementary therapy treatments. The services provided include treatment for: weight loss, skin disorders, stress, nutrition, vitamin infusion bio-identical hormones and health check tests. Services are offered to both adults and children.

At The Health Doctors Limited the non-medical treatments provided, such as nutritional advice and nutritional infusion are exempt by law from CQC regulation. Therefore, we carried out the inspection in relation to medically related treatment only.

Clinical services are provided by the part-time lead GP (female) and part-time nurse (female). Administrative duties are carried out by a full-time personal assistant (female) . As part of The Health Doctors Ltd's  treatment offer they provide the services of a self-employed part-time nutritionist. The service operates between Monday to Friday; 9am to 5:30pm. On average the service sees 25 patients per week.

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Health Doctors Ltd on 5 December 2018. Our inspection team was led by a CQC lead inspector and included a GP specialist adviser.

Before the inspection, at our request, the provider sent us information regarding the service and we reviewed information we held.

During our visit we:

• Reviewed comment cards where patients shared their views and experiences of the service.

• Spoke with the provider of the service.

• Reviewed a sample of the treatment records of patients.

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 15 February 2019

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection on 5 December 2018 to ask the service the following key questions; Are services safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led?

Our findings were:

Are services safe?

We found that this service was providing safe care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services effective?

We found that this service was providing effective care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services caring?

We found that this service was providing caring services in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services responsive?

We found that this service was providing responsive care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services well-led?

We found that this service was providing well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the service was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

The Health Doctors Ltd is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the regulated activities of Treatment of disease, disorder or injury and Diagnostic and Screening Procedures. The address of the registered provider is The Health Doctors Ltd , 4 Harley Street, London, W1G 9PB. https://www.thehealthdoctors.co.uk/.

The provider 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.

As part of our inspection we asked for CQC comment cards to be completed by patients prior to our inspection. We received 18 comment cards which were all positive about the standard of care received at the service.

Our key findings were:

• The provider did not have some medicines recommended for treating medical emergencies in primary care. However, the medicines were obtained shortly after our inspection.
• The service had carried out regular quality improvement activity to improve patient outcomes.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients found the appointment system easy to use and reported that they were able to access care when they needed it.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.
• Not all staff had received up to date safeguarding children level one or basic life support training. However, we saw evidence that this was rectified within a week of the inspection.
• The service had systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen.

There were areas where the provider could make improvements and should:

• Consider broadening the scope of quality improvement activity and developing a system for checking whether improvements have been embedded, to further safeguard high quality clinical care.
• Regularly review and risk assess the decision to stock emergency medicines. 
• Consider reviewing their arrangements to check the identification and age of patients that attended the service.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGPChief Inspector of General Practice