We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of this service on 30 June 2015 as part of our regulatory functions where a breach of legal requirements was found.

We carried out a service review on 20 April 2016 to check that they had followed their plan and to confirm that they now met the legal requirements. This report only covers our findings in relation to those requirements. We asked Abbey Dental Practice to submit evidence as part of this review.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection by selecting the 'all reports' link for Abbey Dental Practice on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection on 30 June 2015 to ask the practice the following key questions; Are services safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led?

Our findings were:

Are services safe?

We found that this practice was providing safe care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services effective?

We found that this practice was providing effective care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services caring?

We found that this practice was providing caring services in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services responsive?

We found that this practice was providing responsive care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services well-led?

We found that this practice was not providing well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Abbey Dental Practice is located in Barking and provides NHS and private dental services.

The practice team included two principal dentists, five associate dentists, nine dental nurses, a practice manager and four receptionists. The general manager was also present on the day of inspection.

We reviewed 21 Care Quality Commission (CQC) comment cards completed by patients and spoke with three patients. They were positive about the care they received from the practice. They commented that staff were caring, respectful and helpful.

The practice manager 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 practice is run.

Our key findings were:

• The practice had safe systems in place including for decontamination of dental instruments and health and safety.
• Staff understood their responsibilities in terms of identifying and reporting any potential abuse.
• Staff had received training appropriate to their roles and were knowledgeable about patient confidentiality.
• Patients were able to make routine appointments when needed; however we found the practice did not always have an efficient appointment system in place to respond to patients’ needs in the event of a dental emergency.
• The patient comment cards we reviewed indicated that patients were consistently treated with kindness and respect by staff.
• Risks such as those arising from incomplete staff recruitment checks had not been suitably identified and mitigated.
• Staff told us they were well supported by the management team. Improvements could however be made to undertake regular audits and use audits to improve the quality of service.

We identified regulations that were not being met and the provider must:

• Establish an effective system to assess, monitor and mitigate the risks including and not limited to those arising from incomplete staff recruitment checks and lack of up to date radiography training of all clinical staff.
• Ensure audits of various aspects of the service, such as radiography are undertaken at regular intervals to help improve the quality of service.

You can see full details of the regulations not being met at the end of this report.

There were also areas where the provider could make improvements and should:

• Review their appointment system and ensure there is a system in place to enable patients with a dental emergency to get an appointment in a timely manner.
• Review the practice’s infection control procedures and protocols giving due regard to guidelines issued by the Department of Health - Health Technical Memorandum 01-05: Decontamination in primary care dental practices and The Health and Social Care Act 2008: ‘Code of Practice about the prevention and control of infections and related guidance’.

People told us they were treated with respect. They said the dentists and staff were approachable and polite and felt they were given the information they needed to make decisions about treatment options available to them.