Orchard Clinic

Updated 31 May 2022

The Orchard Clinic provides private healthcare with an emphasis on addressing mental health. The team includes psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, nutritionists and specialist consultants.

The clinic sees people of all ages. Patients may be referred via their GP or consultant or they may self-refer.

At the time of the inspection Orchard Clinic employed three full time staff members. The majority of staff that worked at Orchard Clinic were sessional staff, who practised under practising privileges. Practising privileges is a process within independent healthcare where a medical practitioner is granted permission to work in an independent hospital or clinic, in independent private practice.

The service also provided phlebotomy services to patients. Covid-19 travel testing was also provided by the service however this service was registered with UKAS and is not within CQC scope of regulation.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, this service has been delivering appointments via video conferencing platforms. Patients are also seen face to face at the Orchard Clinic.

The service is registered with CQC to undertake the following regulated activities:

• Treatment of Disease, Disorder or Injury
• Diagnostic and screening procedures

How we inspected this service

During the inspection visit to the service, the inspection team:

• checked the safety, maintenance and cleanliness of the premises

• spoke with six members of staff

• reviewed eight patient care and treatment records

• spoke to four service users

• reviewed seven staff records

• reviewed information and documents relating to the operation and management of the service

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 31 May 2022

This service is rated as Good overall. (This service has not been inspected previously).

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced inspection at Orchard Clinic as part of our inspection programme.

This service provides outpatient mental health assessment and treatment for adults and children.

The registered manager of the service is a clinical psychologist. 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.

Our key findings were:

• The service provided safe care. Clinical premises where patients were seen were safe and clean. Staff assessed and managed risk well and followed good practice with respect to safeguarding.

• Staff completed a comprehensive mental health assessment of each patient. They provided a range of treatments that were informed by best-practice guidance and suitable to the needs of the patients.

• The teams included or had access to the full range of specialists required to meet the needs of the patients. Staff worked well together as a team and with relevant services outside the organisation.

• Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, and understood the individual needs of patients. The service actively involved patients in care decisions.

• All patients that we spoke to were extremely positive about the service. Patients described staff as professional and knowledgeable and that they always felt listened to.

• The service was easy to access. The criteria for referral to the service did not exclude patients who would have benefitted from care.

However:

• The registered manager did not have sufficient oversight of clinicians’ compliance with the requirements to grant practising privileges.

• The registered manager had limited oversight of the care and treatment provided by clinicians with practising privileges that did not share patients.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The provider should ensure that systems are embedded to provide assurance that clinicians are compliant with the requirements to grant practising privileges.

• The provider should improve systems for oversight of the performance of clinicians in the service.