Hightree Clinic

Updated 10 January 2023

Hightree Clinic is an independent doctor service. They provide consultation, treatment and prescribing services using conventional and complementary medicine. The clinic aims to address the physical, nutritional and well-being needs of patients in order to improve their health and aid recovery. The clinic offers health diagnostics and assessments, for example screening tests for a wide spectrum of infections, deficiencies and hormone imbalances. Services include intravenous treatments for nutritional deficiencies, oxygen therapy (such as medical ozone), local and whole-body hyperthermia. They also offer treatments for musculoskeletal disorders, including joint injections.

Services are provided from:

Hightree House,

Eastbourne Road,

Uckfield,

East Sussex,

TN22 5QL

The clinic is open between 9am to 5pm on a Monday, Tuesday and Thursday.

The service is provided by the lead GP, a nurse and 2 administrative staff. There is also a nutritional therapist.

Hightree Clinic is registered with CQC to provide the following regulated activities: Treatment of disease, disorder or injury; Diagnostic and Screening procedures.

How we inspected this service

Prior to this inspection we reviewed a range of information that we hold about the service, including information gathered by the provider from a pre-inspection information request. Whilst on the inspection we interviewed staff and reviewed key documents, policies and procedures in use by the service.

Updated 10 January 2023

This service is rated as Good overall. (Previous inspection September 2019 – Good)

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good (carried over)

Are services caring? – Good (carried over)

Are services responsive? – Good (carried over)

Are services well-led? – Good (carried over)

We carried out an announced focused inspection at Hightree Clinic, because breaches of regulations were found at our previous inspection.

Following our previous inspection in September 2019, the service was rated Good overall. However, they were rated as requires improvement for providing safe services. They were rated good for all remaining key questions. We issued a requirement notice for regulation 12 (safe care and treatment), and regulation 17 (good governance) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some exemptions from regulation by CQC, which relate to particular types of regulated activities and services and these are set out in Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

Hightree Clinic is an independent doctor service. They provide consultation, treatment and prescribing services for conventional and complementary medicine, with an aim to improve and/or sustain patients’ overall quality of life. The clinic offers consultation and treatment only to patients over the age of 18.

Hightree Clinic provides a range of complementary therapies, for example medical acupuncture, osteopathy and nutritional therapy, which are not within CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

The lead GP is the registered manager. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. 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 service is run.

Our key findings were:

• The provider demonstrated they had taken action to address the areas we said they must improve on at our last inspection, and areas they should improve.
• The service had systems to safeguard children and vulnerable adults from abuse. All staff had received safeguarding training to an appropriate level for their role.
• Systems and processes for infection prevention and control had been implemented; including processes to mitigate the risk of legionella and to ensure staff immunisation was maintained in line with national guidance.
• There was a system for receiving, recording and acting on safety alerts.
• Information about care and treatment was available in an immediately accessible way.
• There was a training programme in place that ensured staff received appropriate learning and development opportunities.
• The service was actively involved in quality improvement activity.

Although we found no breaches of regulation, we told the provider they should make improvements:

• Improve the training matrix to record the level training completed, where available.
• Conduct a risk assessment for staff whose immunisation history is not available, to determine the level of risk to the staff member and patients, and any mitigating actions.
• Continue to improve clinical record keeping; including electronic and paper records, and accurate recording of chaperones offered or used.
• Complete training on how to interact appropriately with people with a learning disability and autistic people.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services