Archived: Bupa Centre - Austin Friars

Updated 26 June 2019

The Bupa Centre – Austin Friars is based at 2 - 6 Austin Friars, London EC2N 2HD and is part of Bupa Occupational health Ltd, a private health organisation. The service operates from the basement and first floor of a shared building.

The service provides health assessments and private GP services to private fee-paying clients. The service provides blood testing and some further medical investigations, such as mammography, where necessary. Patients are able to book appointments online or via the telephone. The service consults with approximately 1000 patients a month and most of these patients are receiving health assessments. Children under 18 years are not seen at the service.

The service employs 13 doctors, two physiotherapists, radiographer and a team of health advisors. Health advisors complete basic clinical testing such as blood pressure, weight and height. They also give lifestyle advice. The clinical team are supported by a team of reception and administration support. The service has a lead physician, a health advisor manager and a centre manager. The service receives support from the wider Bupa organisation and works closely with regional and national Bupa leaders.

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Bupa Centre – Austin Friars on 16 May 2019.

The service is registered with the CQC to provide the regulated activities of diagnostics and screening and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

Before inspecting, we reviewed a range of information we hold about the service and asked other organisations to share what they knew. During our inspection we:

• Reviewed an anonymised sample of the personal care or treatment records of patients.
• Reviewed service policies, procedures and other relevant documentation.
• Inspected the premises and equipment used by the service.
• Reviewed CQC comment cards completed by service users.

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 26 June 2019

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 the Bupa Centre – Austin Friars as part of our inspection programme.

The service provides private health assessment and GP treatments to fee-paying and corporate clients. This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of regulated activities and services and these are set out in Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. The Bupa Clinic – Austin Friars provides a range of physiotherapy interventions, which are not within CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

The service has 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.

As part of the inspection, we gathered feedback from patients using the service. Fourteen people provided feedback about the service and were positive about the support received and the friendly and caring nature of the staff.

Our key findings were:

• There was clear systems and processes to safeguard patients from abuse. All staff had received training appropriate to their role.
• There was oversight of the risks associated with the service. For example, premises, health and safety, fire, legionella and emergency medicines.
• Staff members were knowledgeable and had the experience and skills required to carry out their roles.
• Staff received regular appraisals, one-to-one conversations and career development conversations. All staff had completed mandatory training and were not able to see patients if training had become out-of-date. Staff were given protected time to complete training.
• An infection control and environmental audit been completed. There were systems in place to manage any infection control concerns.
• Clinical records were detailed and held securely. The service did not keep paper records.
• There was regular service meetings and formal communication with staff. There were also regular meetings with the wider Bupa organisation.
• The provider dealt with complaints in an appropriate and timely manner. Learning from complaints was shared with staff and the wider organisation.
• The practice made improvements from all significant events and incidents. The Bupa quality team analysed all significant events and incidents across the organisation and learning was fed back to the service to drive improvement.
• Patients were encouraged to give feedback at every appointment and any patient scoring the service with less than seven out of ten were contacted to give more detailed feedback. This feedback was analysed both service and organisation and made improvements and changes according to this feedback.
• Health advisors contacted all patients who had received health assessments following their appointment to follow up on any lifestyle advice or treatment. This was also used as another method of capturing patient feedback.
• The service had created systems to ensure abnormal results were actioned and followed up in a timely way by using weekly audits. All urgent referrals were followed up by administration staff.
• The service used software to monitor and track health and safety activities. Remedial actions were logged, and compliance was monitored. This included tracking health and safety, building management and fire. The system flagged any assessments or actions that were due to be completed.

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