16 April 2019
During an inspection looking at part of the service
My Dentist - Padiham Road, Burnley is in the village of Padiham and provides NHS and private treatment to adults and children.
There is level access for people who use wheelchairs and those with pushchairs. Car parking spaces, including two for blue badge holders, are available near the practice side entrance.
The dental team includes 10 dentists,12 dental nurses, three trainee dental nurses, two dental hygienists, one dental hygiene therapist, one treatment co-ordinator and three receptionists. The practice also has three visiting implantologists, one visiting orthodontist and one orthodontist who is seeing a small number of patients they treated whilst working at the practice. The practice is managed on a day to day basis by a practice manager. The practice has 12 treatment rooms; six on the ground floor and six on the first floor.
The practice is owned by a company and as a condition of registration must have a person registered with the Care Quality Commission as the registered manager. Registered managers have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated regulations about how the practice is run. The registered manager at My Dentist Padiham Road, Burnley is the practice manager.
The practice is open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday from 8am to 5.30pm. On Thursday the practice is open from 8am to 7pm. The practice is open on some Saturday mornings to accommodate certain advance patient bookings only.
To conduct our follow-up inspection we spoke with the practice manager, who provided evidence of action taken to address identified regulatory breaches.
Our key findings were:
Systems or processes had been established and appeared to be operating effectively to ensure compliance with the requirements of the fundamental standards as set out in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. In particular:
- Work scheduled to be carried out at the practice in the week following our visit, to address longstanding issues with management of Legionella had been completed.
- A new Legionella risk assessment had been carried out to assure that work completed on the water supply system, had addressed issues raised by our inspection.
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A key security log had been introduced to ensure that only authorised persons had access to keys, for example, to access medicines used in sedation.
- All required checks for permanently employed staff were in place. Procedures for assurance of recruitment checks on locum staff had been improved.
- A new practice manager was in place at the practice. The practice manager confirmed support was provided to ensure understanding of regulatory standards required within a dental setting.
- The practice manager held records of professional development for all staff, which only they could update. The introduction of this system meant staff had to show evidence of training completed, so that the practice log could be updated.
We saw evidence of further improvements made by the provider. We found:
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Further training had been delivered to all staff on the practice whistleblowing policy. All staff had signed a practice meeting log to confirm this training had been received. Any staff identified as being absent were given the opportunity to complete this training.
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A maintenance issues log was kept by the practice, to enable follow-up of any works outstanding. A review had also been held by the corporate level health and safety team, and systems introduced to ensure that works required at practice level were not unduly delayed.