Archived: Dr Alexandra Chambers Medical and Aesthetic Practice

Updated 9 May 2017

Dr Alexandra Chambers Medical and Aesthetics Practice opened in 2010 and was registered by CQC in 2011. The hospital occupied two floors of a Victorian five storey building in Wimpole Street, London, an area known for the number of private independent hospitals and clinics.

Dr Chambers is the medical director and has also been the registered manager since 2011.

The hospital has one ward and is registered to provide the following regulated activities:

• Diagnostic and screening procedures (15 April 2011)
• Family planning (18 May 2011)
• Surgical procedures (15 April 2011)
• Treatment of disease, disorder, or injury (18 May 2011).

The hospital provided elective cosmetic surgical procedures which we inspected. Other cosmetic treatments, which are not subject to regulation and the associated consultations, were not inspected.

CQC have inspected the hospital on three previous occasions in 2012 and 2013.

Updated 9 May 2017

Dr Alexandra Chambers Medical and Aesthetics Practice is a small independent hospital offering cosmetic surgery services to privately funded adult patients. The service has been registered with the commission since 2011.

The hospital was previously inspected by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in April 2013. When the report was published in May 2013 we had concluded the location had met all of the standards inspected. On this occasion we inspected the hospital on 6 October 2016 as part of our independent hospital inspection programme. The inspection was conducted using CQC’s comprehensive inspection methodology and was a routine planned inspection. The inspection focussed on the regulated activities of surgical procedures and diagnostic and screening. Procedures not currently subject to regulation were not part of the inspection.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The services provided by this hospital were cosmetic surgery and treatments.

We have not published a rating for this service. CQC does not currently have a legal duty to award ratings for those hospitals that provide solely or mainly cosmetic surgery services.

Our key findings were as follows:

• There were adequate systems to keep people safe and to learn from adverse events or incidents.

• The environment was visibly clean and well maintained and there were measures to prevent and control the spread of infection.

• There were adequate numbers of suitably qualified, skilled and experienced staff to meet patients’ needs, and staff had access to training and development, which ensured they were competent to do their jobs.

• There were arrangements to ensure patients had access to suitable refreshments, including drinks.

• Treatment and care was delivered in line with national guidance and the outcomes for patients were good.

• Patient consent for treatment and care met legal requirements and national guidance.

• Patients could access care in a timely way, and had choices regarding their treatment day.

• Staff ensured patients privacy and the dignity of patients was upheld.

• The leadership team were visible and appropriate governance arrangements meant the service continually reviewed the quality of services provided.

However, there were also areas of where the provider needs to make improvements. The provider should:

• Make arrangements to store clinical equipment more appropriately.
• Check staff comply with the hospital policy and the infection prevention and control (IPC) requirement regarding the wearing of jewellery and nail polish.
• Consider attaching secure tags to checked resuscitation trolleys
• Consider further training for staff around drug cabinet security and checking for out of date medication.
• Consider how to improve staff knowledge of mental capacity, dementia awareness and deprivation of liberty safeguards.
• Consider introducing a formal hospital risk register.

Professor Sir Mike Richards

Chief Inspector of Hospitals