The Belvedere Private Hospital in Knee Hill, south east London, has been rated inadequate following a recent inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
CQC inspectors carried out a focused inspection of the hospital in March to follow up on the progress made from an earlier inspection in October 2020 and to look into more recent concerns raised about the service.
Following this inspection CQC took urgent action to suspend the registration of the provider, The Pemberdeen Laser Cosmetic Surgery Clinic Limited for an initial period of six weeks. A further extension to this suspension was appealed and considered, resulting in urgent conditions being imposed on the provider's registration, restricting the provider from operating.
The hospital provides cosmetic and plastic surgery. It has one operating theatre, eight beds and three consulting rooms.
CQC’s deputy chief inspector of hospitals, Nigel Acheson, said:
“We found little improvement at this inspection. The service was still not managing patient safety incidents well. There was a lack of evidence that the service protected patients from the risk of COVID-19 infections from staff who travelled internationally between places of work.
“Due to the current enforcement action in place, surgery cannot take place at The Belvedere Private Hospital until we are completely satisfied that it will be providing consistent safe, effective care for all of its patients.
“We will continue to monitor the hospital closely and if we do not see evidence of improvement, we will not hesitate to take to take further action on behalf of the people who use the services.”
At the time of the inspection, the hospital did not have a registered manager. The service did not have a systematic approach to improving service quality, and safeguarding high standards of care. There was no clear operational manager in charge of day-to-day management of the service. Leaders were not able to demonstrate that staff were competent for their roles or had appraised staff performance and there was no support and development offered.
CQC has now set out several areas for improvement for the service. These include:
- The provider must take prompt action to address concerns identified during the inspection in relation to: safeguarding, incident recording and reporting, and the governance of the service.
- The provider must ensure there are measures in place to minimise the risk of coronavirus infection from staff travelling from overseas.
- The provider must ensure it has measures in place to protect patients from the risk of harm following the use of photography taken on staff’s personal devices.
- The provider must ensure mandatory training is completed by all staff, checked and reviewed regularly.
- The provider must ensure the premises and equipment is sufficient to keep people safe.
- The provider must ensure there are clear processes in place in the reporting of a potential safeguarding concern.
- The provider must ensure there are clear processes in place for recording and reporting incidents.
- The provider must ensure complaints are handled in line with its own policy and demonstrate concerns are taken seriously and are investigated sufficiently, and share any lessons learned with all staff.
- The provider must ensure there is a registered manager in place.
- The provider must ensure there is adequate daily oversight of the management of the service.
- The provider must ensure there are effective systems in place for managing risk.
Full details of the inspection are given in the report published on our website.
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