Academy of Health and Diet

Updated 19 February 2020

Academy of Health and Diet Blackpool provides medical treatment for weight loss, it is one of two clinics registered for this provider.

• The clinic comprises of a reception and waiting area and two consulting rooms.
• The clinic is open Mondays from 12:00pm until 7:00pm, and Thursdays from 12:00pm until 8:00pm.
• There is a registered manager one doctor, two nurses and two receptionists.

How we inspected this service

We spoke to the registered manager, doctor, nurse and receptionist. We reviewed a range of documents including medical records. 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 19 February 2020

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Academy of Health and Diet Blackpool to follow up on a breach of regulations and to rate the service.

CQC inspected the service on 4 December 2018 and asked the provider to make improvements regarding governance arrangements and processes for managing risks, issues and performance. We checked these areas as part of this comprehensive inspection and found this had been resolved.

Academy of Health and Diet Blackpool is a private clinic that provides medical treatment for weight loss for adults over the age of 18. This location is one of two clinics with this provider. The owner of the service 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.

15 people provided feedback about the service. All the feedback was positive. Patients told us that staff were welcoming and caring. People felt the service was private and confidential.

Our key findings were:

• The premises were appropriate to people’s needs.
• The provider had improved staff communication with regular staff meetings.
• The governance processes had improved since the last inspection but required improved oversight from the registered manager. This was because some policies had been identified as requiring amendment and had not been verified by the manager.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to develop and implement the systems and processes to ensure good governance with regard to policy updates and clinical audit.
• Only supply unlicensed medicines against valid special clinical needs of an individual patient where there is no suitable licensed medicine available.
• Review medical record process for documentation so that there is appropriate recording of co-morbidities and treatment breaks.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care