Taymount Clinic Limited

Updated 5 October 2023

Taymount Clinic Limited is located at Taymount House, Works Road, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, SG6 1LB. The telephone number is 0330 2221622. The website addresses is www.taymount.com.

Taymount Clinic Limited is a private clinic which specialises in providing Faecal Microbiota Transplant (FMT). FMT also known as a stool transplant, is the process of transferring fecal bacteria and other microbes from a healthy individual into another individual. The clinic does not offer services to anyone aged under the age of 18.

The clinic is run by two directors and includes a chief medical officer, two senior FMT practitioners and nutrition advisers, a quality assurance manager, a patient liaison officer and an administrator.

The service is open from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.

How we inspected this service

Before inspecting, we reviewed a range of information we hold about the service and we reviewed the information we asked the provider to send us.

During our inspection we:

• Spoke with the clinic directors and both clinical and non-clinical staff members.

• Reviewed how care or treatment were being delivered including the associated record.

• Spoke with service users who shared their views and experiences of the service.

• Reviewed a range of policies, procedures and management information held by 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 5 October 2023

This service is rated as Requires improvement overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Requires improvement

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 at Taymount Clinic Limited on 4 September 2023 as part of our inspection programme. This is the first inspection of this service since registration.

Taymount Clinic Limited is a private clinic which specialises in providing Faecal Microbiota Transplant (FMT). FMT also known as a stool transplant, is the process of transferring fecal bacteria and other microbes from a healthy individual into another individual. FMT involves the transfer of healthy bacteria in a mixture of prepared processed stool from a healthy donor to the intestine of the patient. The purpose of this treatment is to restore a healthy balance of bacteria in the gut. FMT can be used for the treatment of Clostridioides difficile infection. The products used by Taymount Clinic Limited for FMT are supplied by their sister company, which is a separate legal entity regulated by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

Taymount Clinic Limited is registered with the CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to provide the following 2 regulated activities:

• diagnostic and screening procedures

• treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The provider has a registered manager in place. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the CQC 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 did not have clear systems to keep people safe and safeguarded from abuse across all areas.

• There were systems in place for the management of significant events and incidents.

• Risks to service users were assessed and managed, in most cases.

• There were systems for reviewing and investigating when things went wrong.

• Staff had the skills, knowledge and experience to carry out their roles.

• The service obtained consent to care and treatment in line with legislation and guidance.

• Clinicians helped service users to be involved in decisions about care and treatment.

• Staff treated patients with kindness, respect and compassion.

• Patients were able to access care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs.

• The service did not undertake clinical audits to assess the impact on quality of care and outcomes for patients.

• The service did not have clear responsibilities, roles and systems of accountability to support good governance and management across all areas.

We found breaches of regulations. The provider must:

• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.

The provider should:

• Continue to embed staff understanding of the recently created safeguarding children policy.

• Continue to implement improvements to the complaints procedure to ensure clients receive information on how they can access support from external bodies.

• Embed the understanding of the duty of candour policy across all staff members.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Healthcare