Updated 5 June 2018
We carried out a focused inspection of Chingford Dental Care on 10 May 2018.
The inspection was led by a CQC inspector who had remote access to a specialist dental adviser.
We carried out the inspection to follow up concerns we originally identified during a comprehensive inspection at this practice on 7 September 2017 under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions.
At a comprehensive inspection we always ask the following five questions to get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment:
- Is it safe?
- Is it effective?
- Is it caring?
- Is it responsive to people’s needs?
- Is it well-led?
When one or more of the five questions is not met we require the service to make improvements and send us an action plan. We then inspect again after a reasonable interval, focusing on the areas where improvement was required.
At the previous comprehensive inspection we found the registered provider was providing safe, effective, caring and responsive care in accordance with relevant regulations. We judged the practice was not providing well-led care in accordance with Regulation 17 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. You can read our report of that inspection by selecting the 'all reports' link for Chingford Dental Care on our website www.cqc.org.uk.
We also reviewed the key questions of safe and effective as we had made recommendations for the provider relating to these key questions. We noted that the majority of improvements had been made.
Our findings were:
Are services well-led?
We found this practice was providing well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.
The provider had made improvements to put right the shortfalls and deal with the regulatory breach we found at our inspection on 7 September 2017.
There were areas where the provider could make improvements. They should:
- Review the practice’s arrangements for receiving and responding to patient safety alerts, recalls and rapid response reports issued by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the Central Alerting System and other relevant bodies, such as Public Health England.
- Review the practice's protocols for making, monitoring and following up on referrals made to specialists in primary and secondary care to ensure that patients were seen in a timely manner.