Weston Surgical Centre

Updated 16 May 2022

Weston Surgical Centre delivers services from 224 Weston Road, Meir, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, ST3 6EE. The service provides circumcision to children and adults for therapeutic and non-therapeutic reasons under local anaesthetic, and carries out post procedural reviews and any necessary support to patients who have undergone circumcision at the centre. Although there are some adult patients, the age group is predominantly infants to 16 years old with the majority of circumcisions carried out on children under one year of age. 99% of the circumcisions that are carried out are for non-therapeutic reasons.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission for the provision of Surgical procedures, the Treatment of disease, disorder or injury, and Diagnostic and screening procedures.

Weston Surgical Centre operates from a former NHS GP Practice in a largely residential area. There is on site, and roadside parking available. The building comprises a waiting area, reception office, operating theatre, recovery room, and toilet facilities.

The service is operated by the Childrens Surgical Consortium Limited which registered with the CQC in September 2012. The company has one director who is a qualified consultant paediatric surgeon and urologist, and who acts as the operating surgeon. Other staff working at the centre include an operating department practitioner, a recently employed support worker (male) and a receptionist (female).

The service operates from Weston Surgical Centre approximately twice per month depending on patient demand, and the availability of staff.

The service has a web site www.westonsurgical.co.uk

Updated 16 May 2022

This service is rated as Good overall.

The location was last inspected in September 2017 and was not rated at that time.

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 Weston Surgical Centre as part of our inspection programme and to follow up on breaches of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 Regulated Activities Regulations 2014.

As a result of our inspection undertaken in September 2017, we issued the provider with requirement notices under:

• Regulation 12: Safe care and treatment – for concerns in relation to the administration of controlled drugs.
• Regulation 16: Receiving and acting on complaints – as the service did not have a formal and accessible system for identifying, receiving, handling and responding to complaints by service users and other persons.
• Regulation 17: Good governance - as the service:
  • Did not have in place systems to assess, monitor and improve the quality and safety of services provided.
  • Did not have systems in place to assess, monitor and mitigate risks relating to the health, safety and welfare of service users and others.
  • Was not maintaining an accurate, complete and contemporaneous record in respect of each service user.
  • Was not maintaining securely records kept in relation to the services provided.

At this inspection we found that the practice had put measures in place for ongoing improvement. The practice is now rated Good overall.

Weston Surgical Centre provides male circumcision surgery to children and adults for predominantly religious and cultural purposes under local anaesthetic. The service also provides aftercare for patients.

The lead clinician 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.

How we inspected this service

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, considering the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend the minimum amount of time on site.

During our inspection we:

• Looked at the systems in place relating to safety and governance of the service.
• Viewed key policies and procedures.
• Reviewed clinical records.
• Interviewed the lead clinician both by telephone and face to face.
• Interviewed other staff and persons associated with the service both by telephone and face to face
• Received written feedback from staff.

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

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive?
• Is it well-led?

These questions formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Note: Within the report where we make reference to a parent or parents this also includes those who act as a legal guardian or legal guardians of an infant or child.

Our key findings were:

• The clinic was clean and hygienic, and staff had received training on infection prevention and control.
• The service had good systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When safety incidents did happen, the service learned from them and improved their processes.
• Staff treated service users with kindness, respect and compassion and their privacy and confidentiality was upheld.
• Feedback from patients was very positive in relation to the quality of service provided.
• Patients could access the service in a timely way.
• There was a complaints policy and procedure, both of which were accessible to patients.
• Governance arrangements were in place and staff felt supported, respected and valued by the provider.

Although we saw no breaches of regulation, there are areas of improvement that the provider should consider:

• Implement a system to ensure the appropriate water hygiene safeguards against legionella (Legionella is a term for a bacterium, which can contaminate water systems in buildings).
• Record batch number and expiry dates of medicines used in patients’ notes.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care

Updated 1 December 2017