Highfield ENT Clinic

Updated 6 January 2022

Highfield ENT Clinic works in partnership with Warrington and Halton Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to bring hospital services closer to the patients home. These services include specialist ear care nursing, free NHS hearing aid test, ear wax removal, micro-suction, management of mastoid cavity, treatment of outer and middle ear infections, removal of foreign body in the ear canal and perforated eardrum.

The service is registered at:

Highfield Hospital

Highfield Road

Widnes

Cheshire

WA8 7DL

The clinic is set back off a main road with a large car park with wheelchair access. The team consists of a registered manager, lead operations director, operations manager, two ENT consultants, an ear care nurse specialist, audiologist, health care assistant and administration team. Highfield ENT Clinic is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to provide the following regulated activities:

• Diagnostic and screening procedures.
• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.
• Surgical procedures.

The clinic is open:

Monday 09:30 – 17:30

Tuesday 12:30 – 20:00

Wednesday 09:30 – 17:30

Thursday 09:30 – 17:30

Friday 09:30 – 17:30

Updated 6 January 2022

This service is rated as Good 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? – Good

We carried out an announced focused inspection at Highfield ENT Clinic as part of our inspection programme to follow up on breaches of regulations. The key question we inspected was:

Effective.

CQC inspected the service on 4 March 2019 and asked the provider to make improvements regarding Regulation 11 HSCA (RA) Regulations 2014 Need for consent. We checked this area as part of this focused inspection and found this had been resolved.

Highfield ENT Clinic is operated by Widnes Highfield Health Ltd. The service holds a contract with Warrington and Halton NHS Trust to provide an ear, nose and throat service. This service is delivered by hospital consultants and a specialist ear care nurse. The clinic provides the service to children from two years of age and adults who are registered with a Halton GP Practice.

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. Highfield ENT Clinic provides a range services and treatments, for example ear wax removal, hearing aid tests and electrocardiogram (ECG) which are not within CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

Dr Paul Lawrence 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 provider had addressed the breach of regulation 11: consent. Consent was monitored through audit and appropriate actions were taken.
• The provider had made improvements to policies for complaints, duty of candour and safeguarding to meet legislation.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Review the level of safeguarding children training undertaken by nursing staff as detailed in the Intercollegiate Document @Safeguarding Children and Young People : Roles for Healthcare Staff.

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

Updated 29 July 2019

Highfield ENT Clinic is part of a GP federation. The service holds a contract with Warrington and Halton Trust to deliver ear, nose and throat care to the local community.

We rated this service as good because we found that the service was good in safe, caring, responsive and well led.

The ‘effective’ key question required improvement and there was a breach in meeting the regulation around consent.Start here..