HealthHero Solutions

Updated 12 October 2022

Medical Solutions Inspired provides remote GP consultations to eligible patients who are provided access to care by their employer or as a benefit of their private medical insurance. Patients can book appointments 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Treatment is limited to episodic or acute healthcare and does not currently include ongoing care to manage patients’ long-term conditions or diagnostic services. (Episodic or acute healthcare is the treatment of conditions and symptoms which have a foreseeable end-point).

Patients, normally resident in the UK, could access the service from anywhere worldwide. Where a prescription of medicine is advised by the GP, patients can decide whether to collect it from their chosen pharmacy or to have it delivered to an address of their choosing.

The organisation is overseen by a Chief Executive Officer, with Medical Directors, a Quality and Compliance Director, Finance Director and an Operations Director offering day-to-day management of the service. There are various departments and organisational managers and team leaders supporting IT, customer service, marketing, client development and HR departments.

There are a number of individual GPs who work for the service. The GPs are on the General Medical Council (GMC) GP Register and the NHS England National Performers List and work remotely to provide patient consultations. They are supplied with a laptop and access the providers’ systems securely.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as an independent Healthcare Organisation. The provider is HealthHero Solutions UK Limited. The registered office is in Upper Berkley Street in London.

The address of the main operations office is Medical Solutions Inspired, Inspired, Easthampstead Road, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1YQ.

During the inspection the provider notified the inspection team that they had applied to change the name of the service from Medical Solutions Inspired to HealthHero Solutions. This had not been approved by CQC before the inspection was completed, however, it was approved during the writing of the report. We have therefore referred to the provider by their previous name in this report as this was factually accurate at the time of the inspection.

How we inspected this service

Before the inspection we requested and reviewed information from the provider in advance. During this inspection we spoke to both the Registered Managers (who were also the clinical leads), members of the leadership team and several members of administrative staff. Due to the methodology used we did not conduct a site visit of the address listed as the registered premises.

We requested patient feedback via the provider, but no patients contacted CQC during the inspection.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the following three questions:

• Is it safe?

• Is it effective?

• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection. We did not inspect the key questions of caring and responsive. Therefore, the ratings for these questions have been carried over for the last inspection in June 2019.

Updated 12 October 2022

Letter from the Chief Inspector of General Practice

We rated this service as Good overall.

At our previous inspection in June 2019, we rated this service Good overall, but rated the key question of Effective as Requires Improvement. We issued a requirement notice against Regulation 17: Good Governance of the Health & Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014

We carried out an announced focused inspection of Medical Solutions Inspired on 26 August 2022 to follow up on the breach found at our previous inspection. At this inspection, we inspected the key questions of Safe, Effective & Well-led.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

Medical Solutions Inspired is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the following regulated activities: Treatment of disease, disorder or injury and Transport services, triage and medical advice provided remotely.

Medical Solutions Inspired provides remote GP consultation services to patients of eligible organisations and private medical insurance providers across the UK. Eligible patients can book appointments 24 hours a day, 365 days per year, using Medical Solutions Inspired mobile phone app, dedicated website or telephone booking service. Patients can choose their preferred consultation method from telephone, video or online consultation.

Due to the methodology used in this inspection, we did not conduct a site visit.

At this inspection we found:

• Staff received induction training when newly recruited and had access to training on an ongoing basis.
• Staff had received safeguarding training to the recommended levels in intercollegiate guidance and the providers’ policies helped staff to notify statutory bodies when there were concerns about patients’ welfare.
• There were systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When they did happen, we found the service learned from them and improved their processes.
• The service had policies, systems and processes to ensure staff training and qualifications were recorded, however these were not always operated consistently and effectively.
• GPs followed best practice guidance and documented their decisions in care records appropriately.
• They followed General Medical Council (GMC) best practice guidance and shared the outcome of consultations with patient’s own NHS GPs.
• There was an embedded and continual programme of clinical audits to drive improvement in patient safety and quality of care.
• Quality improvement activity was targeted and focussed on patient feedback and clinical outcomes and achieved improvement.
• Staff involved and treated people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients could access care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• The service had experienced significant growth in demand for its services and had an ambitious strategy to continue increasing its services.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Complete the improvement plan for the accurate documentation of staff training and qualifications records.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services