London Heart Clinic

Updated 10 July 2019

London Heart Clinic is operated by London Heart Clinic Limited. It is a private clinic in Brentford, Middlesex. The clinic primarily serves the communities of West London. It also accepts patient referrals from outside this area. The service opened in April 2017 and this was their first CQC inspection.

The hospital has had a registered manager in post since April 2017. At the time of inspection, they were registered to provide regulated activities of diagnostic and screening procedures, and treatment of disease, disorder, or injury.

Updated 10 July 2019

London Heart Clinic is operated by London Heart Clinic Limited. Facilities include two consultation rooms which are also used as diagnostic facilities.

The service provides diagnostic and screening procedures, which we inspected.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out an unannounced inspection on 2 May 2019.

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.

The main service provided by this hospital was diagnostic imaging.

Services we rate

This is the first time we rated this service. We rated it as good overall.

We found good practice in relation to diagnostic imaging:

• Staff understood how to protect patients from abuse and the service worked well with other agencies to do so.
• There were enough staff to meet the needs of the patients. They received mandatory training in key skills and they ensured everyone completed it. Staff were competent for their roles.
• Staff of different kinds worked together as a team to benefit patients.
• The service controlled infection risk well. Staff used control measures to prevent the spread of infection.
• Staff recognised incidents and knew how to report them appropriately. There were processes in place to ensure complaints were dealt with effectively.
• The service had suitable premises and equipment and looked after them well.
• There was always suitable provision of services to ensure care and treatment delivery and supporting achievement of the best outcomes for patients.
• The service planned and delivered care in a way that reflected the needs of the population of patients who accessed the service to ensure continuity of care.
• Patients’ needs and preferences were considered and acted on to ensure services were delivered to meet those needs.
• Patients and those close to them were treated as active partners in the planning and delivering of their care and treatment.
• Staff understood how and when to assess whether a patient had the capacity to make decisions about their care. They understood the impact of patients care, treatment or condition to their wellbeing and those close to them.
• Managers had the right skills and abilities to run a service providing high-quality sustainable care.
• The clinic collected, analysed, managed, and used information well to support all its activities, using secure electronic systems with security safeguards.

However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• Although records were clear, up-to-date, and easily available to all staff providing care. Staff did not keep detailed records as required by the provider’s policy.
• The service did not have a formalised strategy or a business plan which would describe plans for future.
• The clinic did not use a systematic approach to continually improve the quality of its services and safeguarding high standards of care by creating an environment in which excellence in clinical care would flourish.
• The clinic did not have effective systems for identifying risks, planning to eliminate or reduce them, and coping with both the expected and unexpected.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it should make some improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. Details are at the end of the report.

Nigel Acheson

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals

Updated 10 July 2019