Skin Excellence Clinics

Updated 28 July 2021

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection visit at Skin Excellence Clinic on 7 June 2021 as part of our inspection programme. The clinic is rated as Good

Skin Excellence Clinic is situated in the city of Plymouth, at First Floor, 4 The Crescent, Plymouth,

Devon, PL1 3AB and is registered for the regulated activities of:

• Treatment of disease, disorder, or injury
• Surgical procedures

The Skin Excellence Clinic offers a range of non-surgical cosmetic treatments to help slow down the ageing process as well as further treatments for example, treatment for hormonal imbalances and wellbeing.

The clinic is led by a General Practitioner, assisted by a practice manager, therapists and receptionists.

Access is by appointment only and is only available to adults 18 years or over.

How we inspected this service

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site.

This included:

• Conducting staff interviews using video conferencing

• Requesting evidence from the provider

• A short site visit

Due to the current pandemic we were unable to obtain comments from clients via our normal process of asking the provider to place comment cards within the service location. However, we saw from internal surveys and reviews on social media that clients were consistently positive about the service, describing staff as professional, kind, polite, non-judgemental and caring.

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 28 July 2021

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 inspection at Skin Excellence Clinic as part of our inspection programme.

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the service was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

This service is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of service and these are set out in Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

The service is registered for the provision of treatment, advice or surgery by a medical practitioner. The aesthetic cosmetic treatments that are also provided are exempt by law from CQC regulation. Therefore, we were only able to inspect the provision of advice and treatment and not the aesthetic cosmetic services.

The Clinic Manager 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.

Our key findings were:

• The service was offered on a private, fee paying basis and was accessible to people who chose to use it.

• Procedures were safely managed and there were effective levels of client support and aftercare advice.

• There were systems, processes and practices in place to safeguard clients from abuse.

• Information for service users was comprehensive and accessible. Staff had the relevant skills, knowledge and experience to deliver the care and treatment offered by the service.

The service encouraged and valued feedback from service users via in-house surveys and the website.

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