Bella Vou Ltd

Updated 16 October 2019

Bella Vou Ltd is operated by Bella Vou Ltd. The service opened in 2014. It is an independent private clinic in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. It serves the communities in Tunbridge Wells, and accepts patient referrals from outside this area and abroad.

The main service the clinic provided is minor cosmetic surgery. All surgery is performed as a day case under local anaesthetic. Pre and post-operative consultations take place for cosmetic surgery that is performed by the cosmetic surgeon at this clinic and at other local private hospitals.

The clinic has had one registered manager since July 2016 and one additional registered manager since October 2017.

The clinic facilities are laid out over four floors in a grade II listed building. Situated on the ground floor is the reception, waiting area and a quiet room. The basement housed the three theatres and a sluice room. On the first floor there is a waiting area, three consultation rooms and a procedure room. The administrative offices are on the second floor. There is a toilet on the ground, first and second floors.

The clinic provides day case cosmetic surgery and consultation services for adults over the age of 18 years only.

The clinic offers services to self-pay and privately insured funded patients.

The clinic also offers cosmetic procedures such as dermal fillers and botulinum toxin, laser skin resurfacing and massage therapy. We did not inspect these services, as these are not regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Bella Vou Ltd has been inspected once in 2017 by the CQC. At the last comprehensive inspection, we did not have a legal duty to rate cosmetic surgery services when provided as a single specialty service. At that inspection, the service met all regulations.

Updated 16 October 2019

Bella Vou Ltd is operated by Bella Vou Ltd. The service sees patients on a day case basis and has no overnight beds. Facilities include three operating theatres, one procedure room, three consultation rooms and a quiet room.

The service provides cosmetic surgery to patients over the age of 18. We inspected surgery services.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out an unannounced inspection on 8 and 12 August 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 this service as Outstanding overall.

• The service had enough medical, nursing and support staff with the right skills, knowledge and experience to keep people safe from avoidable harm and to provide the right care and treatment.

• Staff continually cared for patients with compassion, kindness and respect. They made sure that people’s privacy and dignity needs were understood and always respected.

• The service treated incidents and complaints seriously. Managers investigated them, shared lessons learned with staff, and made improvements to service provision where indicated.

• Staff followed infection prevention and control practices to reduce risks to patients.

• Risks to patients were assessed and their safety was monitored and managed, so they were supported to stay safe.

• The service had suitable premises and equipment and looked after them well. Since our last inspection, managers had improved the arrangements for clinical waste and equipment maintenance.

• The management team promoted a highly positive culture that supported and valued staff, creating a sense of common purpose based on shared values. Staff worked well together and were committed to providing the best possible care for their patients.

• Patients were fully supported to make informed decisions about their chosen procedures and treatments, and were given sensible expectations.

• Patient records were clear, up-to-date and complete. They were easily accessible to staff.

• The service offered a cosmetic surgery clinical fellowship which is rare in a small service. These positions were usually offered in larger services. This reflected the high regard fellow plastic and reconstructive surgical specialists held of this service.

• Staff worked especially hard to make the patient experience as pleasant as possible. Staff recognised and responded to the holistic needs of their patients from the first referral before admission to checks on their wellbeing after they were discharged from the hospital.

However, we also found areas of practice that require improvement:

• The provider should make sure they store medical gas cylinders that complied with its medicines management policy and the Department of Health Technical Memorandum (HTM) 02-01 Cylinder for storage and handling, and Health and Safety at Work Act 1974.

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.

Nigel Acheson

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (London and South)

Updated 16 October 2019

Surgery was the main activity of the service. We rated this service as outstanding because it was caring, responsive to people’s needs and well-led. We rated safe and effective as good.