Stratum Clinics Limited

Updated 13 March 2023

Stratum Clinics is an independent provider of medical services. The service provides a broad range of minor surgery and aesthetic services. Some of these are not regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), but some services are, including skin tag and wart removal, mole surgery, minor surgery and removal of skin abnormalities. This report references only those services that are regulated by CQC.

Stratum Clinics is based at Raynes Park Health Centre, 1 Lambton Rd, London SW20 0LW. The service is for private fee-paying patients only, the service does not see NHS patients. The provider is registered with the CQC to deliver the regulated activity of surgical procedures, diagnostic and screening procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury. The provider primarily provides services to patients throughout London.

The clinic has two consultation rooms and three treatment/procedure rooms that can also be used to perform minor surgery. There are eight doctors, two nurses, one beauty therapists, a manager and two administrators.

The service operates on Monday to Friday:

Monday: 8.30am-5pm

Tuesday: 8.30am-5pm

Wednesday: 8.30am-6pm

Thursday: 8.30am-5pm

Friday: 8.30am-5pm

The service does not formally provide a service outside of these hours. The service employs administrators who oversees appointments and administration for all patients.

How we inspected this 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 13 March 2023

This service is rated as Requires improvement overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Requires improvement

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Requires improvement

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of Stratum Clinic on 13 February 2023. This was the first CQC inspection of this location under the current CQC inspection methodology.

There is a registered manager at the company. 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.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of regulated activities and services and these are set out in Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. Stratum Clinic provides a range of surgical and non-surgical cosmetic interventions, for example laser treatment which is not within CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

Our key findings were:

• Not all staff had completed training required for their role.
• Not all documents had been reviewed or retained for staff recruitment.
• Some audits had no conclusions or outcomes recorded to demonstrate improvements.
• There was no formal mechanism for shared clinical learning as there were no clinical meetings.
• The service provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The service organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs. Patients could access care and treatment in a timely way.
• The way the service was led and managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centre care.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Review safeguarding systems, processes and record keeping.

The areas where the provider must make improvements as they are in breach of regulations are:

• Ensure care and treatment is provided in a safe way to patients
• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care .

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

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