Archived: HR Healthcare Ltd

Updated 16 August 2017

Our inspection team was led by a CQC inspector and included a GP specialist advisor, a second CQC inspector and a CQC pharmacist specialist.

HR Healthcare Limited is an organisation (registered with the Care Quality Commission in July 2016) that operates an online clinic for patients providing consultations and prescriptions and medicines.

HR Healthcare employs doctors on the GMC register, to work remotely in undertaking patient consultations when they apply for medicines online. The service is open between 9am and 5pm on weekdays and only available to UK residents. This is not an emergency service. Subscribers to the service pay for their medicines when their online application has been assessed and approved. At the time of this inspection the service was not operating.

Once approved by the prescriber, medicines are dispensed, packed and posted; they are delivered by a third party courier service. HR Healthcare is operated via a website (www.treated.com).

HR Healthcare is also affiliated to a number of other online services which are not in the scope of their Care Quality Commission (CQC) registration.

We undertook a comprehensive inspection of HR Healthcare on 22 November 2016 under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. Following this inspection the service had its registration suspended. The full comprehensive report following the inspection on 22 November 2017 can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for HR Healthcare on our website at www.cqc.org.uk. 

We undertook a follow up focused inspection of HR Healthcare on 17 July 2017. This inspection was carried out to review in detail the actions taken by the service to improve the quality of care and to confirm that the service was now meeting legal requirements.

Updated 16 August 2017

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We carried out an announced focussed inspection at HR Healthcare on 17 July 2017. The full comprehensive report on the November 2016 inspection can be found by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for HR Healthcare on our website at www.cqc.org.uk. This inspection was an announced focused inspection carried out on 17 July 2017 to confirm that the service had carried out their plan to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breaches in regulations that we identified in our previous inspection on 22 November 2016 which led to the suspension of the service. This report covers our findings in relation to those requirements and also additional improvements made since our last inspection.

Our key findings were as follows:

• There was now an effective system in place for recording and reporting significant events.
• A system was in place to receive and act upon patient safety and medicine alerts.
• The clinical system had been updated so clinical staff could now easily access patient records from previous consultations.
• There was now a clear leadership structure in place.
• There was now a system in place for quality improvement and clinical audit.
• There was now an effective system in place to deal with emergency situations.
• Staff were aware of safeguarding procedures and a policy was in place.
• Information about making complaints was now clearly stated on the provider’s website.
• Policies and procedures were now easily accessible to staff on the intranet.
• The business continuity plan had now been updated to include relocation details.
• There was now a policy in place to cover data security, protection, destruction and disposing of sensitive data.

We previously suspended the service on 2 December 2016 for three months initially. The suspension was then extended for a further three months as the provider informed us they were still not compliant with the regulations. The service is now no longer suspended and is able to operate.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGPChief Inspector of General Practice