The London Psychiatry Centre

Updated 20 October 2023

The service provides outpatient mental health assessment and treatment for patients of all ages. The service includes a multidisciplinary assessment of children and young people, psychological therapies, and neuromodulation therapy. The provider contracts with 8 consultant psychiatrists (two of whom were child and adolescent psychiatrists), 2 clinical psychologists, 4 psychotherapists, a psychodynamic therapist, a clinical nurse specialist and a nutritionist. The service has a medical director, practice manager, registered nurses, and administrative staff. The service is open 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday. The service has additional opening times by appointment only. These are 6pm to 8pm Monday to Thursday and 10am to 1pm on Saturday.

In 2022 the service assessed and treated approximately 700 patients. They provided 8405 appointments, 335 of these were new patients and 31 patients were discharged during this period. Assessment and treatment at the service could be face to face or internet based.

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 the practice manager, the medical director, 2 consultant psychiatrists, 1 child psychiatrist, a clinical nurse specialist, 1 registered nurse, an administrative manager and a medical secretary

• reviewed 6 patient care and treatment records

• spoke to 3 patients and reviewed a recent patient survey

• reviewed 4 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 20 October 2023

This service is rated as Good overall. (Previous inspection December 2019 – Good).

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Outstanding

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The London Psychiatry Centre as part of our inspection programme.

CQC inspected the service on 17 December 2019 and asked the provider to make improvements to their clinical governance meetings, to focus on quality and performance in the service, and to seek formal feedback from patients more frequently. We checked these areas as part of this comprehensive inspection and found this had been resolved.

The London Psychiatry Centre operates a consultant led out-patient service to assess and treat people with mental health needs. Patients of the service include children and young people, older adults and people with substance misuse problems.

The practice manager at the service is also the registered manager. 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.

We spoke to 3 patients and reviewed several comments and feedback from a patient survey that the service had conducted. All the comments were positive, describing the service as caring, supportive and compassionate. Patients told us that they were treated with dignity and respect and were seen quickly.

Our key findings were:

• Staff assessed patients’ treatment needs holistically.

• Patients described staff as compassionate and supportive, and they felt involved in decisions about their care and treatment.

• Patients at risk of physical health problems linked to their mental health problems or treatment had investigations or were referred to specialists.

• The service developed and made changes to address the specific needs of patients. These included assessment tools in different languages and a specific complaints form designed for children and young people.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The service should ensure that all staff are up to date with completing mandatory training.