Top Medical Clinic - Birmingham

Updated 30 March 2022

Top Medical Clinic – Birmingham is an independent provider of medical and dental services to private fee-paying patients and treats adults and children at 89A Allison Street, Birmingham B5 5TH.

The provider offers specialist services including general practice, dentistry, dermatology, endocrinology, gynaecology, neurology, orthopaedics, urology and paediatrics.

The clinic was set up to provide services for Polish patients, however the general public are also seen at the clinic. Services are available to people on a pre-bookable appointment basis.

The service employs five non-clinical staff including receptionists and a trainee practice manager. All the clinical staff who work in the clinic are self-employed; however, they have a contract with the provider and work at the clinic under practicing privileges.

The dental team includes six dentists and three dental nurses.

The clinic is on the first floor with a reception, waiting area and five consulting rooms. The property is not owned by the provider. The clinic has no lift and the first floor consulting rooms are not accessible to people who use a wheelchair or other mobility aids. Where appropriate, the service inform people about other services that may be more accessible.

The clinic is open between 9am and 8pm Monday to Saturday and from 9am to 6pm on a Sunday.

The provider Top Medical Clinic LLP is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the regulated activities diagnostic and screening procedures, family planning, maternity and midwifery services, surgical procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

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 30 March 2022

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 Top Medical Clinic - Birmingham as part of our inspection programme and to provide a rating for the service as it had not been inspected before.

Top Medical Clinic - Birmingham is an independent provider of medical and dental services and treats adults and children. During this inspection we inspected the medical and dental services provided by the clinic. In this inspection report, any ratings provided relate to the medical services only and do not include the dental services.

The provider had appointed a 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 implemented appropriate safety procedures including for the management of infection prevention and control. The clinic appeared to be visibly clean and well-maintained.
• The provider had implemented systems to help manage and mitigate risk to patients and staff.
• Staff knew how to deal with medical emergencies. Appropriate medicines and life-saving equipment were available.
• Safeguarding processes were in place and staff knew their responsibilities for safeguarding vulnerable adults and children.
• The provider had appropriate staff recruitment procedures.
• The clinical staff provided patients’ care and treatment in line with current guidelines.
• Patients were treated with dignity and respect and staff took care to protect their privacy and personal information.
• Staff provided preventive care and supported patients to ensure better oral health.
• The appointment system took account of patients’ needs.
• There was effective leadership and a culture of learning from complaints and incidents.
• Staff felt involved and supported and worked as a team.
• Staff and patients were asked for feedback about the services provided.
• The provider had implemented appropriate procedures for the management of complaints.
• The provider had implemented information governance arrangements; however, we found the clinic was not completing all the required and recommended dental audits including audits of radiography, antimicrobial prescribing and patient records.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The provider should review and improve in-house risk assessments so that they consider all possible risks and mitigating actions.
• The provider should continue to monitor and improve its processes to manage the storage of medications including those that need refrigeration.
• The provider should continue with their plan of proposed audits for the medical service to allow further improvements to be identified and the service developed further.
• The provider should review and improve their system and processes for dental audits such as radiography, antimicrobial prescribing and patient records to improve the quality of the dental service and where appropriate, include action plans so that there is documented learning points and the resulting improvements can be demonstrated.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP

Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care