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
The London Skin and Hair Clinic (Holborn) provides private medical diagnoses and treatments for dermatological conditions. The clinic is located at 233 High Holborn, First Floor, London WC1V 7DN.
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.
We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The London Skin and Hair Clinic on 19 December 2022 as part of our inspection programme.
Our key findings were:
- People had comprehensive assessments of their needs, which included consideration of clinical needs, mental health, physical health and wellbeing.
- Feedback from patients was positive about the way doctors explained procedures and highly positive about the compassion of the service’s nurse and reception team.
- The provider was not undertaking periodic Infection Prevention and Control audits. Shortly after our inspection we were sent confirming evidence that an audit had taken place.
- We saw evidence of quality improvement activity. For example, a recent internal audit of doctors’ note taking, clinical audits and evidence of discussion of clinical practice and significant events at clinical meetings.
- The service was tailored to meet patients’ needs and delivered in a way to ensure flexibility, choice and continuity of care.
- Practice management arrangements supported the delivery of patient centre care and treatment.
The areas where the provider should make improvements are:
- Take action to monitor recently introduced protocols for communicating with patients’ NHS GPs in instances where the service prescribes Isotretinoin. Isotretinoin is a medication prescribed to treat severe acne that should not be used during pregnancy as it can cause birth defects.
- Take action to introduce a written protocol governing its existing patient identification arrangements.
- Take action to introduce a periodic programme of internal note taking audits and systems to invite learning from clinical audits.
Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA
Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services