Optimax Laser Eye Clinics - Manchester is operated by Optimax Clinics Limited. Facilities include four floors with no disabled access. The reception, main waiting room, topography room and two consultation rooms are located on the ground floor; the first floor has a waiting area, managers’, office, two storerooms, counselling room and doctor’s room. The second floor is a staff only area with kitchen. The basement has public and staff toilets, waiting area, preparation, recovery, laser room and staff changing rooms.
The service provides refractive eye surgery only. If a patient required further care or surgery using anaesthesia or sedation, as an example, lens replacement surgery, patients are referred for private surgery to another Optimax Clinics Limited branch. If patients had lens surgery in another Optimax Clinics Limited branch the Manchester location provided pre and post-operative care. We inspected refractive eye surgery.
We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 03 August 2017 along with an unannounced visit to the location on 11 August 2017.
To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.
Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the Optimax Clinics Limited understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
Services we do not rate
We regulate refractive eye surgery services but we do not currently have a legal duty to rate them. We highlight good practice and issues that service providers need to improve and take regulatory action as necessary.
We found the following areas of good practice:
- All areas of the service were tidy and well maintained; they were free from clutter and provided a safe environment for patients, visitors and staff to move around freely.
- There were minimal incidents and complaints. Staff members were aware of how to raise incidents and feedback from patients in relation to their experience was followed up.
- Staff members were positive about their working experience feeling supported to be part of a team and had worked in the service for a number of years.
- A system of risk and quality management was in place that centred on ongoing meetings and communication within the location and the organisation.
- Patients spoken with and feedback to the service were positive about their experience and the outcomes from their surgery.
- A number of audits were in place with action plans that were monitored in order to progress areas of improvement.
However, we found the following issues that the provider needs to improve:
- The arrangements for dispensing medicines were not sufficient to provide safe management of medicines. As there was no policy or procedure to support staff practice and no competency or training for staff to ensure that they had the correct skills.
- References were not consistently available for employed staff and those working with practicing privileges. Specific qualification information was not available in all personnel files.
- A complaint for a patient allocated to the Manchester branch who received surgery in another Optimax Clinics Limited branch had not been investigated for lessons learnt.
- Policies and procedures were not all up to date or available to consistently deliver a quality and safe service.
Following this inspection, we told Optimax Clinics Limited that it must take some actions to comply with the regulations and that it should make other improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. We also issued Optimax Clinics Limited with two requirement notices for regulations breached. Details are at the end of the report.
Ellen Armistead
Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals