The Institute of Translational Medicine Imaging Centre is operated by Cobalt Health. The service delivers magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to patients on behalf of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. The Institute of Translational Medicine Imaging Centre (ITM) also offers a small number of MRI scans to privately paying patients. The ITM Imaging Centre supports a wide range of research but when not being used for research the centre provides a service to the local NHS trust for routine clinical MRI examinations.

The service had radiographers employed by both Cobalt Health and the NHS trust. The service was integrated with the trust for IT systems, policies and procedures.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out an unannounced inspection on 17 January 2019.

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.

Services we rate

We rated this service as Good overall. We rated it good for safe, caring, responsive and well-led. We do not currently rate the effective key question.

Our findings are as follows:

• Staff understood how to protect patients from abuse and the service worked well with other agencies to do so.

• The service controlled infection risk well. All areas of the centre including where staff conducted MRI scanning were visibly clean and well maintained.

• The service managed patient safety incidents well.

• Managers monitored the effectiveness of care and treatment and used the findings to improve the service.

• Staff of different kinds worked together as a team to benefit patients.

• Staff cared for patients with compassion. Staff respected patients’ privacy and dignity and supported patients’ individual needs.

• Staff provided emotional support to patients to minimise their distress.

• Staff involved patients and those close to them in decisions about their care and treatment.

• The service planned and provided its services in a way that met the needs of local people.

• Patients could access the MRI scanning service at the centre when they needed it.

• The service treated concerns and complaints seriously, investigated them, learned lessons from the results and shared these with all staff.

• Managers had the right skills and abilities to run the ITM imaging centre providing high-quality sustainable care.

• The service had a clear vision for what it wanted to achieve and workable plans to turn it into action. Senior leaders developed the service with the referring NHS trust, staff and patients.

• Managers across the service promoted a positive culture that supported and valued staff, creating a sense of common purpose based on shared values.

• The service had developed a governance and management framework to support the delivery of the strategy and ensure high quality care was provided to patients. This was regularly reviewed and improvements made as a result.

• The service engaged well with patients, staff and the referring NHS trust to effectively manage and develop their scanning services.

• The service was committed to improving services by learning from when things went well or wrong and promoting training, research and innovation.

However, there were some areas where the service needed to make improvements:

• The provider did not hold emergency drills at the centre.

• The provider did not ensure all medication was within its expiry date.

• The provider did not ensure all hard copies of the corporate risk assessments, policies and procedures are up-to-date.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it should make other improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. Details are at the end of the report.

Amanda Stanford

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (Central Region)