The Stratford Clinic is operated by SWFT Clinical Services Limited. Facilities include one operating theatre with a recovery area and four consultation rooms.

The facility provides a range of surgical procedures and outpatient services. We inspected both the surgical and the outpatient services. Services include day-case surgical procedures and outpatient appointments for preoperative and postoperative review, as well as outpatient treatments such as joint injections, cryotherapy and mole mapping. In the reporting period of October 2017 to November 2018, there were 333 day-case episodes of care and 2434 outpatient attendances. The outpatient appointments were a mixture of patients accessing treatment and surgery outpatient consultations.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the short notice announced inspection on 12 December 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.

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

Services we rate

Our rating of this hospital/service improved. We rated it as good overall.

Infection risks were controlled well. Staff were aware of the need to maintain a clean environment and kept equipment and the premises clean.

There was enough staff with the right qualifications, skills, training and experience to keep people safe from avoidable harm and abuse and to provide the right care and treatment.

Staff recorded and administered medicines well, the clinic provided adequate storage and had processes in place for the monitoring of medicines.

Staff were competent for their roles. The clinic manager appraised staffs’ work performance and held training sessions to provide support.

All relevant staff were involved in assessing, planning and delivering people’s care and treatment. Treatment was consultant-led and involved discussions with the nursing staff and administrative staff where required.

Staff cared for patients with compassion. Feedback from patients confirmed that staff treated them well and with kindness.

Services were planned and provided in a way that met the needs of local people and considered meeting peoples individual needs.

Leaders within the clinic had the skills, knowledge and experience required to run a service providing sustainable care.

However:

There were systems in place to ensure the safety of patients. However, we found inconsistencies with the completion of observation charts.

Care and treatment was provided based on national guidance there was evidence of its effectiveness. However, we saw that some policies were not available.

Staff generally used care pathways to ensure best practice was followed however we were told by the registered manager that the clinic was currently evaluating the venous thromboembolism (VTE) policy.

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. Details are at the end of the report.

Amanda Stanford

Acting Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (Central)