ESS Clinic

Updated 22 December 2022

ESS Clinic is located in South Woodford, East London at:

142 George Lane

London

E18 1AY

The location was registered with the CQC in January 2015 to provide the regulated activities of Diagnostic and screening procedures, Surgical procedures, and Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

The practice provides a private minor surgery service for benign (non-cancerous) lesions. This includes skin tags, seborrheic warts, cysts, moles and dermatofibroma. Consultations and treatment are carried out by GPs. The service is available to people aged 18 years and over only.

Clinics are every Tuesday from 2pm to 5pm and alternate Fridays from 9am to 12pm. The premises remains open outside of clinic hours (Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm) and people can leave their contact details with the receptionist and a member of clinic staff will call them back. Alternatively, appointments can be booked by telephone Monday to Friday from 9am-4pm.

Details of the service are set out on the website - www.essclinic.co.uk

The service is run by three directors, one of whom is a GP. Other staff at the service include a GP and a health care assistant/receptionist.

How we inspected this service

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

This included:

• Requesting evidence from the provider.
• Conducting staff interviews with two non-clinical directors and a health care assistant/receptionist using video conferencing.
• A site visit to review a sample of service user records and consultations and an interview with a GP to discuss the findings.

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 22 December 2022

This service is rated as Good overall. (Previous inspection 11/2018 – Unrated)

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 ESS clinic as part of our inspection programme.

The service offers private minor surgery for benign (non-cancerous) lesions. This includes skin tags, seborrheic warts, cysts, moles and dermatofibroma. Consultations and treatment are carried out by general practitioners.

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. ESS Clinic provides a range of non-surgical cosmetic interventions, for example anti-wrinkle injections and dermal fillers which are not within CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

A non-clinical director is the 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 service had systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When they did happen, the provider learned from them and improved their processes.
• The service routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care provided.
• The service had systems and processes in place to ensure that patients were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and they were involved in decisions about their care and treatment.
• Patients were able to access care and treatment within an appropriate timescale for their needs.
• The service had systems in place to collect and analyse feedback from patients.
• There was a clear leadership structure to support good governance and management.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Improve the systems for ensuring staff are up to date with training.
• Consider installing a hearing induction loop to assist patients and visitors who use a hearing aid.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services