CVS Health Care (CVS) has provided cardiac diagnostic and consultancy service since opening in 2012. The service is owned and managed by a team of partner consultant cardiologists offering a ‘one stop’ service to private patients who live in Kent and East Sussex. The service offers a wide range of services which include, but are not restricted to, cardiac analysis, electrophysiological studies, coronary angioplasty, cardiac diagnostic testing, ablations, pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillator and angiograms.

It also provides an interventional cardiac treatment once a month. This invasive service is delivered from the cardiac laboratories of two NHS trusts in the Kent and East Sussex area.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the unannounced visit to the service on November 12th, 2018.

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.

Our key findings were as follows:

• Staff had access to and completed regular mandatory training.
• The service had a safeguarding adults’ policy which was understood by staff.
• Equipment was regularly serviced, cleaned and checked.
• Care was provided by professional, compassionate and caring staff.
• The patients we talked to and feedback we reviewed showed a consistent level of satisfaction.
• Services was planned and delivered in a way that met the needs of patients.
• Policies and procedures reflected best practice and national guidance.

We found areas of practice that require improvement in the service:

• Systems to monitor the standard and quality of care delivered by CVS were not established.
• We did not see governance systems or processes that protected patients from the risk of receiving poor care or treatment.
• There was a lack of systems to identify risk and mitigate risk in the service.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it must take some actions to comply with the regulations and that it should make other improvements, to help the service improve. We also issued the provider with one requirement notice that affected CVS Health Limited. Details are at the end of the report.

Nigel Acheson

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals