Updated 28 June 2016
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the practice had made improvements to was meet the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008
The focused follow up inspection took place on the 10 May 2016. The inspection was led by a CQC inspector who had access to remote advice from a specialist advisor.
Updated 28 June 2016
We carried out an announced follow up inspection on 10 May 2016 to ask the practice the following key questions which we found the practice required actions; Are services safe, and well-led?
Our findings were:
Are services safe?
We found that this practice was now providing safe care in accordance with the relevant
Are services well-led?
We found that this practice was now providing well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.
Background
CQC inspected the practice on 10 November 2015 and asked the provider to make improvements regarding Regulation 12: Safe care and treatment and Regulation 17: Good Governance. We checked these areas as part of this follow up inspection on 10 May 2016 and found this had been resolved.
On the 10 November 2015 we found that the provider could not demonstrate they took appropriate actions to:
• Assess, monitor and mitigate the risks to the health and safety of patients, staff and visitors.
• Ensure that the premises used by the service provider are safe to use for their intended purpose and are used in a safe way.
• Ensure that the equipment used by the service provider for providing care and treatment to a patient is safe for such use and is used in a safe way.
• Ensure that systems are in place for assessing the risk of, and preventing, detecting and controlling the spread of, infections, including those that are health associated.
• Ensure there is an effective approach for identifying where quality and/or safety is being compromised and steps are taken in response to issues. These include all audits and risk assessments undertaken within the practice.
• Establish systems to support communication about the quality and safety of services and what actions have been taken as a result of audits, concerns, complaints and compliments.
• Ensure that audit processes function well and have a positive impact in relation to quality governance, with clear evidence of actions to resolve concerns.
• Establish processes to actively seek the views of patients and should be able to provide evidence of how they have taken these views into account in relation to decisions.
The practice was situated in a listed building within Lancaster University Campus. The practice provides NHS and private dental treatment to both students and staff at the university and to the general public who live in the immediate area of the practice.
The practice is operated by a single handed dentist. Staffing for the practice was managed from the provider’s sister practice also in Lancaster. There is a dental hygienist who works at the practice every Tuesday and the dentist provides treatment on a Monday, Thursday and Friday. There are no evening or weekend surgery hours available. There is always a receptionist and a dental nurse in the practice when care is being provided. The practice manager is based at the providers sister location.
The principal dentist is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) as an individual. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the practice is run.
Our key findings in this follow up inspection were:
The provider had taken actions to address all the concerns highlighted above and in the report of the 10 November 2016.