Optimax Laser Eye Clinics - Reading

Optimax Laser Eye Clinics - Reading is operated by Optimax Clinics Limited.

The clinic has two floors and consists of a main waiting and reception area, a topography room, three consultation rooms, a preparation room, a recovery room and a laser treatment room. All clinical and other patient areas are fully wheelchair accessible.

The service provides laser correction procedures using class 4 and class 3b lasers carried out by ophthalmologists.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced inspection on 3 March 2018 and 10 March 2018.

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 provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

We regulate refractive eye surgery but we do not currently have a legal duty to rate them when they are provided as a single specialty service. 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:

• Patients were involved in their care and had the opportunity to ask questions at all stages of their treatment.

• Staff treated people with kindness and care. The clinic manager maintained consistent local audits and safety and performance monitoring that contributed to the operation of the service.

• There was a culture of open communication and shared learning in the clinic. This included improvements to the service as a result of learning from incidents, near misses and patient feedback.

• There had been significant work nationally in the provider, which was reflected in this clinic, to update and improve policies and protocols. This included establishing policies in line with national standards and best practice guidance.

• Consent procedures were in line with national standards and we saw patients received clear and concise information about their planned treatment and aftercare.

• The local clinic team used a series of audits to assess compliance with the provider’s corporate standards. These demonstrated consistently good levels of performance.

• The service was flexible to patients needs and we saw good coordination between surgeons, clinical staff and other clinics in the provider’s group to accommodate patient schedules and preferences.

• Local leadership was consistent and resulted in a well-established governance and performance management structure.

However we found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• Clinical staff did not always follow policy in relation to the handling of sterile single-use items. This presented an infection control risk. Procedures in the laser room did not always ensure patients were protected from the risks associated with infection control.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it should make other improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. Details are at the end of the report.

Amanda Stanford

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (South East)