Harley Street Healthcare Clinic

Updated 18 March 2022

Harley Street Healthcare Clinic is a private general medical practice offering a range of services to patients such as routine medical checks, health screening, private prescriptions, adult immunisations, travel vaccinations and blood tests.

The service employs five members of staff which includes two (male), doctors who are registered with the General Medical Council GMC, a healthcare assistant (male), a Practice Manager and an administrator.

The service is delivered from 104 Harley Street, London, W1G 7JD. The clinic is a short walking distance from Regents Park and Great Portland Street stations on the London underground. There is paid off street parking available. A reception desk and waiting room is situated on the ground floor, which is shared with other services in the building and is operated by the premise’s management service. The provider told us that all consultations were provided on the ground floor of the premises and administrative spaces were upstairs on the second floor.

The service is registered to provide the regulated activities of Diagnostic and screening procedures and the Treatment of disease, disorder or injury from this location to people over the age of 18 years. The clinic is open between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday. Between 8pm and 10pm.

Monday to Friday and all-day Saturday and Sunday, the clinic can be accessed by telephone and email.

The service website address is www.harleystreet104.com. We visited Harley Street Healthcare Clinic on 10 February 2022. The team was led by a CQC inspector, accompanied by a GP specialist advisor. Before the inspection, we reviewed notifications received about the service, and a standard information questionnaire completed by the service. During the inspection, we interviewed staff, made observations and reviewed documents.

How we inspected this service

During the inspection we spoke to the registered manager and the administration staff. We reviewed a range of documents.

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 18 March 2022

This service is rated as Good overall. (Previous inspection July 2021 – Inadequate)

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 comprehensive inspection at Harley Street Healthcare Clinic on 10 February 2022 to follow up concerns identified at our previous inspection in July 2021. At our July 2021 inspection the provider was rated as inadequate overall, placed into special measures and served conditions forbreaches of regulation 12 (safe care and treatment) and 17 (good governance). The provider was also issued with warning notices in respect of breaches of regulation 12 (safe care and treatment) and requirement notices for regulation 16 (receiving and acting on complaints). The concerns at our last inspection were that:

• The provider had not adequately assessed and addressed risks associated with infection prevention and control.
• There was expired medical equipment on site.
• Concerns that patients’ queries raised during the consultation were not discussed with the patient, investigated or acted upon.
• Examinations were not being undertaken where clinically indicated.
• Concerns that test results were not acted upon.
• Concerns that patients were not referred back to their GP where appropriate.
• The provider did not maintain securely an accurate, complete and contemporaneous record in respect of each service user, including a record of the care and treatment provided to the service user and of decisions taken in relation to the care and treatment provided.
• Clinical management plans had not been completed where required.
• Patient history was not documented or recorded.
• Concerns regarding the clinical decision making and lack of rational to support certain decisions.
• There was no effective system in place to act on patient safety alerts.
• Not all staff were aware of the signs and how to respond appropriately to safeguarding concerns and staff had not received training regarding sepsis.
• The provider did not consistently provide written responses to complaints with information about how to escalate complaints if they were not satisfied with the provider’s response

Harley Street Healthcare Clinic is a private general medical practice which offers a range of private services to patients such as routine medical checks, health screening, private prescriptions, adult immunisations, travel vaccinations and blood tests.

The lead GP is 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.

Our key findings were:

• The service was carrying out weekly and monthly safety audits to improve and aid in patient safety, this included audits on emergency medicine and equipment, vaccine fridge monitoring, patient record keeping.
• A new electronic patient record keeping system was in place since the last inspection.
• Staff members has been on a prescribing course and patient history taking documentation course, to aid with their record keeping.
• There was now an effective system to manage safety alerts.
• The provider had adequately assessed and addressed risks associated with infection prevention and control.
• All staff had received role specific training, including safeguarding and sepsis awareness.
• The provider organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs.
• Patients could access care and treatment from the service within appropriate timescale for their needs.
• Feedback from patients who completed the providers internal feedback form was positive about the service and the way staff treated them.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to monitor and review quality improvement for patients.
• Consider installing a second thermometer for the vaccine refrigerator.
• Check policies/statement of purpose/audits and remove reference to any staff member no longer working at the service.

I am taking this service out of special measures. This recognises the significant improvements that have been made to the quality of care provided by this service.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care