East Point Vision (EPV) opened in 2016; and is located in Gorleston. EPV is a private patient ophthalmic service, which operates from consulting rooms based in the local NHS foundation trust.

The service is set over two floors and has a reception area, one consulting room, a diagnostic area, an operating theatre and pre and post treatment areas. All five partners are full time NHS consultant ophthalmologists.

The service provides ophthalmic health screening care and surgery to privately funded patients. This includes outpatient investigations for glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration disease and invasive procedures such as non-laser cataract surgery, intravitreal implants and vitreoretinal surgery.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We have reported our inspection findings against the two core services of Surgery and Outpatients as these incorporated the activity undertaken by the provider. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on the 4 September 2017, along with an unannounced visit to the provider on the 18 September 2017.

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.

The main service provided by this hospital was non-laser cataract surgery. Where our findings on surgery– for example, management arrangements – also apply to other services, we do not repeat the information but cross-refer to the surgery core service.

We rated this service as good overall because;

• Patients were treated with care and kindness.

• Patients were provided with an out of hours contact number for any concerns or advice required post treatment.

• The service managed staffing effectively and had processes in place to ensure that staff had the appropriate skills, experience and training to keep patients safe and to meet their care needs.

• Patient feedback was collected, analysed and used to make improvements/changes to the service.

• Results from the patient feedback survey undertaken by the provider indicated patients were satisfied with the care they received.

• All clinical and non-clinical areas were visibly clean and well maintained.

• There were effective processes in place to ensure that medicines were stored and checked appropriately.

• The results of local audit demonstrated positive outcomes for patients.

However

• We found there were eight days in a three-month period in which the daily checks for the blood glucose monitoring equipment was not checked.

• The provider did not have a process in place to meet the needs of patients with complex needs

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it should make improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve.

Heidi Smoult

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals