Our Private Doctor

Updated 18 August 2023

• Our Private Doctor is located in Twyford village, south of Winchester, Hampshire. The address is Hockley Mill Stables, Church Lane, Twyford, Winchester, Hampshire SO21 1NT.
• The service supports people with their health and wellbeing. It offers consultation and diagnostic tests to identify patient-specific health risks and provides advice on lifestyle changes and develops treatment plans. These include plans to support weight loss through the prescribing of medicine to manage appetite and advice to modify lifestyles and behaviours. It also prescribes medicines for hormone rebalancing and offers minor surgical treatments.
• The service only treats adults.
• This was the first inspection of this service since it was registered in December 2021 to deliver the regulated activities Treatment of disease, disorder and injury, Diagnostic and screening procedures, Surgical procedures and Services in slimming clinics.
• The clinic offers appointments on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 10am to 5pm. The provider may offer appointments outside these times by special arrangement.

How we inspected this service

Information was gathered from the provider prior to the inspection, while on site during the inspection and after the site visit. We visited the location and interviewed the provider, observed the premises, sampled patient records and reviewed a range of documents relating to service provision. We spoke by telephone with 7 patients as part of this inspection and we looked at patient feedback reports received by CQC in the past year as well as the service’s own feedback forms. The medicines optimisation inspector undertook their on-site visit at a later date.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following 5 questions:

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 18 August 2023

This service is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Our Private Doctor on 13 June 2023 and 27 June 2023. This was the first Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection of this location since its registration in December 2021.

The owner of the service is the provider’s responsible individual and the registered person. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the service is run.

The service is registered with the CQC to provide Treatment of disease, disorder, and injury, Surgical procedures and Services in slimming clinics. Our Private Doctor provides services to people seeking independent medical diagnosis, advice for health risk reduction, weight management and hormone assessments and treatments. It provides treatment of uncomplicated verrucae with cryotherapy (freezing) and the management of benign uncomplicated skin lesions such as skin tags.

The provider undertakes a limited number of remedial surgical treatment to people who have had aesthetic treatments (such as thread lifts and anti-wrinkle treatments using Botulinum toxin) which have led to complications.

The provider is the registered individual for Our Private Doctor. They do not undertake services outside the scope of registration and do not provide any NHS funded care. The provider is also a director for another company that carries out aesthetic treatments at the same premises. We did not inspect or report on these services.

We spoke with 7 patients after our site visit and asked about their experiences of care. We also looked at feedback we had received about the service in the past year. All feedback was consistently positive with patients describing their care as compassionate, professional, comprehensive and holistic.

Our key findings were:

• The service provided care in a way that kept patients safe and protected them from avoidable harm.
• Staff had the relevant skills, knowledge, and experience to deliver the care and treatment offered by the service.
• Patients received effective care and treatment that met their needs.
• Staff dealt with patients with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The service valued feedback from patients. We saw that patient feedback was positive.
• The service organised and delivered services to meet patients’ needs.
• The way the service was led and managed promoted the delivery of high-quality, person-centred care.
• There was a strong focus on learning and improvement.

We saw the following outstanding practice:

• Patients were truly respected and valued as individuals and empowered as partners in their care, practically and emotionally. The culture of the service was highly personalised and patients were consistently positive about their care and treatment.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The provider should continue to install their new records management system to support improved management and audit of records and patient outcomes.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Healthcare