The Wellness Laboratory

Updated 22 August 2023

The provider, The Wellness Laboratory Limited is registered to provide the Care Quality Commission (CQC) regulated activity of treatment of disease, disorder or injury. It provides services to fee paying clients from 21 Knightsbridge, London, SW1X 7LY.

The Wellness Laboratory primarily provides low level Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy to help clients with general health and wellbeing. Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy involves breathing pure oxygen at a higher level than atmospheric pressures in an enclosed chamber. The service does not treat patients that need a higher level of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for the ongoing treatment of disease, and do not take referrals from general practitioners or hospitals. These patients are referred on to local hospital practitioners for the correct course of treatment. The service also provides the occasional intravenous vitamin drip. Phlebotomy is also carried out in the initial assessment period for the Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. Treatment is only provided to patients over the age of 18.

The service consisted of the director (who is also the CQC registered manager), 3 clinical assistants and an administration assistant. All had received the appropriate training for the role.

The service opening hours are 9.30am to 7pm Monday to Friday. The provider does not run a 24 hour service as required of medical hyperbaric services (those found attached to hospitals for the treatment of illness) as it is run as a purely cosmetic treatment. If there are any emergencies out of business hours, clients are advised to contact the 111 service or visit the local accident and emergency department.

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 22 August 2023

This service is rated as Good overall.

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 The Wellness Laboratory as part of our inspection programme.

The service provides Hyperbaric services that are not for the treatment of ongoing disease but for general wellbeing purposes. Patients are not referred to the service from other medical services. The service also provides some phlebotomy for the assessment of the Hyperbaric treatment and intravenous vitamin drip therapy. The Care Quality Commission do not currently regulate or inspect Hyperbaric services used for general wellbeing. All other regulated activity and subsequent processes have been used to provide a rating for the service.

The Clinical Manager is the CQC Registered Manager. 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 had effective systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When they did happen, the service learned from them and improved their processes.
• The service routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence-based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated people with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Patients were able to access care and treatment from the service within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• There was a focus on continuous learning and improvement.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to develop clinical audits to include more areas of practice such as prescribing.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care