Psychiatric And Psychological Consultant Services Limited

Updated 7 October 2019

The service is provided by Psychiatric And Psychological Consultant Services Limited. It aims to provide specialised mental health assessment, treatment, psychotherapy and counselling on an out-patient basis. The provider contracts with approximately 30 consultant psychiatrists and 30 clinical psychologists to undertake clinical work with patients of all ages. At the time of this inspection, the service had no patients under 18 years. The service has a medical director, a practice manager and a team of administrative staff.

Referrals are received from several sources including GPs. Some patients self-refer. Patients are responsible for funding their treatment either directly or through health insurance.

Updated 7 October 2019

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 this announced inspection of Psychiatric And Psychological Consultant Services Limited on 22 and 24 July 2019 as part of our inspection programme.

Psychiatric And Psychological Consultant Services Limited operate a consultant led out-patient service to assess and treat people with mental health needs.

CQC previously inspected this service in May 2017. At that time, we did not rate independent doctor services. At the May 2017 inspection, we found breaches of health and social care regulations. We asked the provider to make improvements in relation to the safe management of prescription pads, risk assessment and risk management for patients, incident reporting and the monitoring of staff training and appraisals.

Our key findings at this inspection were:

• The provider had improved the safety of the service since our previous inspection. Prescription pads were now stored securely, and the provider now monitored staff training and appraisals. The provider had introduced a new critical incident reporting procedure. The provider now effectively monitored staff training and appraisals.
• The process for auditing clinical consultations, prescribing and referrals was not fully effective. There had been no audit of clinical records since July 2017. Discussion of the findings and recommendations of this audit had not taken place until March 2019 and there was no action plan in place at the time of the inspection.
• We spoke with four people who use the service. They were happy with the service. They said that staff treated them with dignity and respect and their treatment and care was effective.
• The premises were clean, safe and suitable for the service provided.

The service’s practice manager 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.

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

• The provider must ensure that there is an effective clinical audit process in place to consider the quality of care provided and prescribing practice in relation to current best practice guidance; make changes where necessary or appropriate to improve the service and review practice to see whether the changes made have resulted in an improvement.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The provider should implement improvements to risk assessment documentation and procedures and review progress in this area.
• The provider should follow national guidance on the comprehensive assessment of the needs of patients with more severe and enduring mental health needs.

• The provider should carry out a risk assessment on whether there should be equipment and medicines for use in an emergency on the premises.

Updated 7 October 2019