London Professional Aesthetics

This service is rated as Requires improvement.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Requires improvement

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Requires improvement

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at London Professional Aesthetics as part of our inspection programme of a new provider registration for the service. This was a first rated inspection for the service that was registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in August 2019. During this inspection we inspected the safe, effective, caring, responsive and well led key questions.

London Professional Aesthetics is an independent Skin Clinic located in Islington, London. The clinical director of the service 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.

The service is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the regulated activities of Treatment of disease, disorder or injury and Diagnostic and Screening procedures

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.

London Professional Aesthetics provides a range of non-surgical cosmetic interventions, for example dermal fillers, lip fillers and Botox injections which are not within the CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

Our key findings were:

• There was evidence that some risks were not assessed and well-managed; the service did not have an effective system of premises checks.
• Procedures for managing medical emergencies including access to emergency medicines and equipment were not safe. There was no defibrillator on site.
• The provider did not have a defined set of mandatory training that staff needed to complete to carry out their role effectively.
• There was limited evidence of systems to support good governance and management.
• The provider had a safeguarding policy. Staff had completed safeguarding training relevant to their role. The clinical staff had the appropriate level of safeguarding training for vulnerable adults and children.
• The premises were clean and well maintained. There were effective systems in place to reduce the risk and spread of infection.
• The clinic routinely reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence based guidelines.
• There was evidence of activity which aimed to improve the quality of clinical procedures provided.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

The areas where the provider must make improvements as they are in breach of regulations are:

• Ensure care and treatment is provided in a safe way to patients.
• Establish effective systems and processes to ensure good governance in accordance with the fundamental standards of care.

We have told the provider to take action (please see the specific details on action required at the end of this report).

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Consider extending quality improvement activity to include clinical audits of post treatment infections or side effects.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

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