Sk:n - Newcastle Grey Street

Updated 29 July 2021

• The registered provider of this service is Lasercare Clinics (Harrogate) Limited. This location is Sk:n- Newcastle Grey Street, located at 76 Grey St, Newcastle, NE1 6AF. We visited this site as part of the inspection. The building includes a reception/ waiting area and treatment rooms. Customer parts of the building are fully accessible. Staff offices are in a basement with shared access with another commercial premises. There is limited on street parking outside the premises, and other public parking nearby.
• Sk:n – Newcastle Grey Street is registered under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to provide the regulated activities of surgical procedures, diagnostic and screening procedures, and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.
• This clinic first registered with the CQC in 2010 and is registered to treat patients aged 18 and over. The services offered include those that fall under registration, such as mole removal, minor skin procedures involving a surgical procedure (e.g. skin tag removal) and medical acne treatment. Other procedures, that do not fall under scope of registration include lip fillers, skin peels, anti-ageing injectables, dermal fillers and laser hair removal. The clinic also provides laser hair removal and hair removal by electrolysis for transgender NHS patients.
• The providers website is www.sknclinics.co.uk and from there information on all locations can be accessed, a network of over 50 clinics across the UK.
• Core opening hours are Monday to Friday 10am – 8pm; Saturday 9am-6pm and Sunday 10am-5pm. A contact centre is available seven days a week with access to an out of hours clinic nurse rota.

How we inspected this service

Before the inspection, we asked the provider to send us some information, which was reviewed prior to the inspection day. We also reviewed information held by CQC on our internal systems.

During the inspection we spoke with the clinic manager, a medical director and a nurse. We made observations of the facilities and service provision and reviewed documents, records and information held by the service. We also sent questionnaires out to non clinical staff.

There are three doctors who carry out CQC registered procedures at the site, two female and one male. Two are on the specialist register for plastic surgery and dermatology respectively. There is also one nurse (female).

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 29 July 2021

This service is rated as Good overall. This was the first time we had rated this service. (The previous inspection in October 2013 was unrated; we found it met the five standards we inspected at that time).

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 on 9 July 2021 at Sk:n - Newcastle Grey Street as part of our inspection programme.

Sk:n – Newcastle Grey Street is registered under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to provide the regulated activities:

• Surgical procedures

• Diagnostic and screening procedures, and

• Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

This service is registered with CQC in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. The service provides independent dermatology services, offering a mix of regulated skin treatments and minor surgery as well as other non-regulated aesthetic treatments. There are some exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of regulated activities and services and these are set out in Schedules 1 and 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. We only inspected and reported on the services which are within the scope of registration with the CQC.

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. There was no registered manager at the time of inspection due to a staffing change; however, the newly recruited Clinic Manager had applied for CQC registration.

Our key findings were:

• The service had safety systems and processes in place to keep people safe. There were systems to identify, monitor and manage risks and to learn from incidents.
• There were regular reviews of the effectiveness of treatments, services and procedures to ensure care and treatment was delivered in line with evidence-based guidelines.
• Staff treated patients with compassion, respect and kindness and involved them in decisions about their care.
• There was a clear strategy and vision for the service.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Review and improve the auditing of infection rates after minor surgery.
• Review and improve the training for staff in the use of spill kits.
• Review and improve the provision of information in a range of appropriate languages and formats where needed.
• The provider should review and improve the support and monitoring arrangements for clinic managers.

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