Archived: Cricklewood Dental Clinic

We carried out this announced inspection on 9 December 2021 under section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. We planned the inspection to follow up on concerns we identified during our inspection of the service on 23 July 2021 and to check whether the registered provider was meeting the legal requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated regulations.

The inspection was led by a Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspector who was supported by a specialist dental adviser.

We undertook a comprehensive inspection of Cricklewood Dental Clinic on 23 July 2021 under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. We found the registered provider was not providing safe or well led care and was in breach of regulations 12 – Safe care and treatment and 17 – Good governance.

You can read our report of that inspection by selecting the 'all reports' link Cricklewood Dental Clinic on our website www.cqc.org.uk.

As part of this inspection we asked:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective
• Is it well-led?

When one or more of the five questions are not met we require the service to make improvements and send us an action plan (requirement notice only). We then inspect again after a reasonable interval, focusing on the areas where improvement was required.

Our findings were:

Are services safe?

We found this practice was not providing safe care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

The provider had made some improvements. However, they had failed to make all of the improvements in relation to the regulatory breaches we found at our inspection on 23 July 2021.

Are services well-led?

We found this practice was not providing well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

The provider had made some improvements. However, they had failed to make all of the improvements in relation to the regulatory breaches we found at our inspection on 23 July 2021.

Background

Cricklewood Dental Clinic is in the London Borough of Brent and provides NHS and private dental care and treatment for adults and children.

The dental team includes the principal dentist, one associate dentist, one visiting dentist and one trainee dental nurse. The clinical team are supported by a receptionist. The practice has two treatment rooms.

The practice is owned by an individual who is the principal dentist there. They have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated regulations about how the practice is run.

During the inspection we spoke with the principal dentist, the associate dentist, the trainee dental nurse and the receptionist. We looked at practice policies and procedures and other records about how the service is managed.

The practice opening times are:

9am to 6pm Mondays to Fridays

Our key findings were:

• The provider had arrangements to ensure that equipment was tested, serviced and maintained in accordance with relevant guidelines.
• Infection prevention and control procedures were in accordance with national guidance. However, there were ineffective arrangements to monitor these procedures.
• Emergency equipment was not available in accordance with the Resuscitation Council UK 2021 guidelines.
• There were ineffective systems to assess and mitigate the risks of fire at the practice. The findings from the most recent fire safety risk assessment had not been acted on to reduce identified risks.
• The provider had ineffective procedures to ensure that all the required information was available for staff who work at the practice.
• There was ineffective leadership to support a culture of continuous improvement, and there were ineffective governance systems to monitor the day to day running of the practice.