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Alliance Medical Fylde Coast Diagnostic Centre is operated by Alliance Medical Limited. The service carries out approximately 100 diagnostic imaging appointments per week. The majority of appointments are for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans but the service also has facilities for ultrasound, x-ray and dental imaging.

The service provides diagnostic imaging. We inspected diagnostic imaging services.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the announced part of the inspection on 13 November 2018.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Services we rate

Alliance Medical Fylde Coast Diagnostic Centre had not previously been inspected. We rated it as Good overall.

We found good practice in relation to diagnostic imaging:

• The service managed staffing effectively and services always had enough staff with the appropriate skills, experience and training to keep patients safe and to meet their care needs.
• The service provided care and treatment in line with current evidence-based practice and national guidelines.
• Staff treated patients with compassion and respected privacy and dignity at all times.
• The service provided care and treatment which met the needs of the local population and individuals. Patients could access services when they needed.
• The service promoted a culture of openness and honesty. Staff were proud to work for the service and were focussed on providing excellent standards of patient-centre care.

Following this inspection, we told the provider that it should make improvements, even though a regulation had not been breached, to help the service improve. Details are at the end of the report.

Ellen Armistead

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (North)