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.
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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.
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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.
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The service treated incidents and complaints seriously. Managers investigated them, shared lessons learned with staff, and made improvements to service provision where indicated.
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Staff followed infection prevention and control practices to reduce risks to patients.
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Risks to patients were assessed and their safety was monitored and managed, so they were supported to stay safe.
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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.
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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.
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Patients were fully supported to make informed decisions about their chosen procedures and treatments, and were given sensible expectations.
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Patient records were clear, up-to-date and complete. They were easily accessible to staff.
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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.
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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:
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)