Newson Health

Updated 5 November 2019

Newson Health Limited was founded by menopause specialist Dr Louise Newson. The Menopause Clinic was opened in September 2018, to provide individualised treatment for women with perimenopause and menopause. The clinic provides care to women of all ages and educational events for primary care clinicians.

The service is based in Winton House, Church Street, Stratford upon Avon in Warwickshire and provide care to patients throughout the UK. Additional experts provide advice and treatment in areas including nutrition, pelvic floor physiotherapy, counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy, acupuncture and hypnotherapy.

The Menopause Clinic is a limited company with a board of directors, a team of NHS doctors, an operations team which includes the practice manager and a facilities manager. They are supported by two nurses with special interests in menopause, a health care assistant and an admin team. The clinic provides private consultations and treatment to women who mainly self-refer and is open from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.

The practice is registered with the CQC to carry out the following regulated activities: treatment of disease, disorder or injury and diagnostic and screening procedures.

How we inspected this service

Before our inspection we reviewed information we held about the clinic. We also reviewed information that we had received from the provider ahead of the inspection and information available on the providers’ website.

The methods that were used included feedback comments from people using the service, interviewing doctors, the practice manager and review of documents.

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?

Updated 5 November 2019

This service is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at The Menopause Clinic on 2nd September 2019 as part of our current inspection programme.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to provide an independent doctors services to individual patients. Eleven patients provided feedback in preparation for the inspection. All comments were extremely positive about the service they received. Patients commented that they received excellent treatment, doctors were caring and friendly and that all doctors were knowledgeable and professional.

Our key findings were:

We found that:

• The practice provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.
• There was an open and transparent approach to safety and a system in place for recording, reporting and learning from significant events. The practice had clear systems to manage risk so that safety incidents were less likely to happen. When incidents happened, the practice learned from them and reviewed their processes to ensure improvements were made.
• There were clearly defined and embedded systems, processes and practices in place to keep people safe and safeguarded from abuse and for identifying and mitigating risks of health and safety.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• The practice reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence- based guidelines and best practice.
• Patients told us that all staff treated them with kindness and respect and that they felt involved in discussions about their treatment options.
• Doctors had the appropriate skills, knowledge and experience to deliver effective care and treatment.
• There were clear responsibilities, roles and systems of accountability to support effective governance.
• The way the practice was led and managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centred care.
• There was a strong focus on continuous learning and improvement at all levels of the organisation.
• There was visible practice and managerial leadership with audit arrangements in place to monitor quality.

We saw areas of outstanding practice:

• There were no set limits to the number of consultations, so doctors were able to make a full assessment of medical needs.
• For patients who were unwilling to consent to information being shared with their GP, duplicate consultation letters were sent to the patient for them to share with their GP should they wish to do so in the future.
• Feedback from patients was consistently positive about the treatment they received. All comments were highly complementary about the service from a variety of sources including the clinic’s website, social media sites and from patients who completed comment cards.
• There was a policy in place for providing menopausal support for members of staff. Staff we spoke with told us said they found this beneficial and very much appreciated this in the working environment.
• The provider regularly published articles on menopause and other medical issues. An article on managing osteoporosis in menopausal women had been included in a recent medical publication.

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