Archived: Brayford Studio Limited Also known as Brayford Studio

Brayford Studio is an independent ultrasound clinic based in Lincoln, providing scanning services to self-funding patients.

We carried out a short notice announced focused inspection in September 2023 to follow up concerns we found at our inspection in July 2023, where we rated the diagnostic and screening core service as inadequate overall. This inspection on 12 December 2023 was a further focused inspection to follow up concerns found at the previous inspections.

We only inspected some of the key questions of safe, effective and well led as this is where the breaches of regulations were found. We did not inspect the safe, effective and well led key questions in full; instead, we focused on the key lines of enquiry where serious concerns had been previously identified to see if improvement had been made.

We did not re-rate the service as we only looked at areas based around the breaches. We inspected the service to determine if the service had made improvements.

We found that:

• Safe care was not provided at all times. The service did not control infection risk well, infection prevention and control audits were not robustly completed and did not identify all risks. Cleaning products were not appropriate for all procedures undertaken and there was visible dust and marks on clinical equipment. The service did not ensure there were effective processes to assess and respond to patient risk. There was limited reflection or evaluation of practice in relation to potential patient safety issues identified on previous inspections. There was limited review or evaluation of potential abnormalities shown on scans and subsequent referral processes to specialist services for follow up. Arrangements to improve the legibility of patient records were unclear and there were limited verification checks of patient information, leading to inconsistencies between paper and electronic records.
• The effectiveness of the service was not monitored. Audits to monitor patient outcomes were not carried out in line with the clinical governance policy. There was no benchmarking or review of the quality of scans. Training and competency checks were limited despite concerns raised at previous inspections about the quality and interpretation of scans.
• The service did not operate effective governance processes. There was insufficient evidence of assessment of quality, safety and monitoring of the performance of the service. The service lacked processes to identify and manage risk. There was limited evidence of continuous improvement and learning activities.

However, we found that:

• Mandatory training had been completed and was up to date.
• Single use ultrasound gel was available and gel decanting was no longer taking place.
• Repairs to the treatment room door had been carried out.
• There were no expired single use items within the clinic.
• Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) previously found discarded in drawers and cupboards had been removed.
• There was a clear policy for the management of records and the destruction of confidential waste.
• Computers and ultrasound equipment were password protected.
• The ultrasound machine was subject to quality assurance testing.

Following this inspection, we identified that while some improvements had been made, these were insufficient and we issued a notice of decision to the provider where we imposed the following condition on their registration the condition we imposed was as follows;

The Registered Provider must not undertake any form of consultation or screening with any new or existing service users, without the prior written permission of the Care Quality Commission.

In addition, due to the insufficient improvements made in the time since the initial inspection in July 2023 and this inspection in December 2023, we issued a notice of decision to cancel their registration. Cancellation of the providers registration took effect from 26 March 2024.