22 May 2019
During a routine inspection
The Globe Travel Health Centre is a private clinic providing travel health advice, travel and non-travel vaccines, blood tests for antibody screening and travel medicines such as anti-malarial medicines to children and adults. In addition, the clinic holds a licence to administer yellow fever vaccines.
This location is registered with CQC in respect of the provision of advice or treatment by, or under the supervision of, a medical practitioner, including the prescribing of medicines for the purposes of travel health. The clinic is registered with the Care Quality Commission under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to provide the following regulated activities:
- Diagnostic and screening procedures.
- Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.
At the time of the inspection, the Clinical Director was 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.
As part of our inspection we asked for Care Quality Commission comment cards to be completed by patients prior to our inspection. We received 23 completed comment cards which were mainly positive about the standard of care received. Patients reported staff were kind, knowledgeable, friendly, professional and caring. There were several comments relating to how informative the consultation process was. One negative comment card was already being dealt with as a complaint by the service.
Our key findings were:
- The service had systems to safeguard children and vulnerable adults from abuse.
- The provider completed regular clinical and non-clinical audits to assess and monitor performance.
- Patients we spoke with told us they were treated with care and compassion and satisfied with the service offered.
- We received 23 CQC patient comment cards, 22 of those where wholly positive and one card was negative.
- Patients were able to book online, over the telephone or walk into the clinic during the opening hours.
- Patients were able to be seen at any of the provider’s locations.
- The provider had an induction programme for all newly appointed staff. New nurses received a tailored induction course depending on their previous travel health experience.
- Staff we spoke with told us they felt valued members of the staff team and were happy to work for the provider.
The areas where the provider should make improvements are:
- Embed new arrangements for managing clinical waste.
Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care