Wimpole Aesthetic Centre

Updated 9 December 2019

Wimpole Aesthetics Centre Ltd is operated by Wimpole Aesthetics (Medical) Ltd . The service opened in 2007. It is a private centre in London. The centre primarily serves patients seeking cosmetic procedures across the UK. It also accepts patient from abroad, however these patients were a very small portion of the overall demographic.

The centre has had a registered manager in post since 2010. The centre also offers cosmetic procedures outside the regulated activities such as dermal fillers, intravenous vitamin drips, laser procedures. We did not inspect these services.

Updated 9 December 2019

Wimpole Aesthetics Centre Ltd is operated by Wimpole Aesthetics (Medical) Ltd . The service did not provide in-patient facilities and patients did not stay overnight at the location. Facilities include two theatres, with one being used as a recovery room, clinic rooms, treatment rooms and a waiting area.

The centre provides elective non-major cosmetic surgery for adults and provides treatment for Lyme disease. The centre did not treat any patient under 18 years old in the reporting period. We inspected the service under the cosmetic surgery core service, we did not inspect the Lyme disease service under the medical core service framework.

We carried out an unannounced inspection on 22 August 2019. We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology to see if improvements had been made since the service was placed in special measures after the previous inspection conducted in October 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.

Summary

We rated Wimpole Aesthetic Centre Ltd as good overall. The service had improved since our last inspection conducted in October 2018 where we had placed the service into special measures; however, there were still some areas where the service could improve

We found the following areas had improved since the previous inspection:

• The centre had improved by providing mandatory training in all key skills to staff and ensured everyone completed it.
• The centre controlled infection risks and kept clinical areas clean. However, staff had only recently started to monitor surgical site   infection rates and screen new admissions for micro-organisms and could not provide data regarding this.
• The centre had improved by ensuring staff completed and updated risk assessments for each patient and removed or minimised risks.
• The centre had improved by ensuring staff kept suitable and appropriately detailed records of patients’ care and treatment.
• The centre understood how to manage patient safety incidents, staff recognised and reported incidents and near misses. Incident learnings and outcomes were shared and discussed with the wider team.
• The centre had improved by providing care and treatment based on national guidance and evidence of its effectiveness. Staff assessed and monitored patients regularly to see if they were in pain and gave pain relief in a timely way.
• The centre had improved by ensuring staff were competent for their roles. Managers appraised staff’s work performance and held meetings with them to provide support and development. Staff understood their roles and responsibilities under the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
• The centre had improved by ensuring managers had the right skills and abilities to run a service providing high-quality sustainable care. The centre promoted a positive culture that supported and valued staff. The centre had improved its governance system and risk management system.

However, we found the following areas that required improvement;

• The provider did not formally monitor the effectiveness of care and treatment.
• The centre was still developing a strategy for what it wanted to achieve but had developed formalised values.
• The centre did not collect or use information for the purpose of service management and improvement
• The centre lacked a formalised regular approach to quality improvement.

We found sufficient improvement to remove the service from special measures.

Dr. Nigel Acheson

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals

Updated 9 December 2019

Cosmetic surgery was the main activity of the service.

We rated this service as good overall because it was good in safe, responsiveness and it was well-led. We did not rate effective or caring as we did not have enough information.