SpaMedica Wirral

Updated 23 January 2020

St Catherine's Health Centre is a registered location for Spamedica Ltd and is located within St Catherine’s health centre. The service opened in 2014. It is a private clinic in Birkenhead, Merseyside. The clinic primarily serves the communities of the Merseyside and the surrounding areas offering cataract surgery and yttrium-aluminium-garnet laser (YAG) capsulotomy services for NHS patients (YAG capsulotomy is a special laser treatment used to improve your vision after cataract surgery). The registered manager had been in post since February 2019. However, the service has had a registered manager in post since it opened.

Updated 23 January 2020

St Catherine's Health Centre is a registered location for Spamedica Ltd. The service is located on the third floor in St Catherine's Health Centre in Birkenhead. The service is accessible by either stairs or lifts and facilities include one operating theatre, consulting rooms, and two waiting areas.

The service provides cataract surgery and yttrium-aluminium-garnet laser (YAG) capsulotomy services for NHS patients over the age of 18 years.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the unannounced part of the inspection on 5 December 2019.

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.

Services we rate

We rated it as Good overall.

We found good practice in relation to surgery:

• The service monitored the effectiveness of care and treatment. Outcomes compared well against the national average and benchmarked well against other providers.They used the findings to make improvements and achieved outcomes for patients that were consistently better than the national average.

• Key services were available seven days a week, if needed, along with a consultant-led 24-hour advice line to support timely patient care. Additional appointments were scheduled at weekends to meet patient demand.

• The service planned care to meet the needs of local people, took account of patients’ individual needs and worked with others in the wider system and local organisations to plan and delivery care. People could access the service when they needed it and waiting times were in line with the national standard.

• Staff worked well together for the benefit of patients, advised them on how to lead healthier lives, supported them to make decisions about their care, and had access to good information.

• The service had enough staff to care for patients and keep them safe. Staff had training in key skills, understood how to protect patients from abuse, and managed safety well. The service controlled infection risk well. Staff assessed risks to patients, acted on them and kept good care records. They managed medicines well. The service managed safety incidents well and learned lessons from them. Staff collected safety information and used it to improve the service.

• Staff treated patients with compassion and kindness, respected their privacy and dignity, took account of their individual needs, and helped them understand their conditions. They provided emotional support to patients, families and carers.

• Leaders ran services well using reliable information systems and supported staff to develop their skills. Staff understood the service’s vision and values, and how to apply them in their work. Staff felt respected, supported and valued. They were focused on the needs of patients receiving care. Staff were clear about their roles and accountabilities. The service engaged well with patients and the community to plan and manage services and all staff were committed to improving services continually.

However, we found areas of practice that require improvement in surgery

• Patient records were not always stored securely.

• Not all policies were reviewed within the documented date.

We found areas of outstanding practice in surgery:

• Staff worked especially hard to make the patient experience as pleasant as possible.

• The service achieved good outcomes that were continually monitored with patients reporting a positive experience.

• The service had an endophthalmitis box on site in case of an emergency.

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

Ann Ford

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals

Updated 23 January 2020

We rated this service good in safe, caring, responsive and well-led and outstanding in effective.