Cavendish Imaging Harley Street is operated by Cavendish Imaging. Cavendish Imaging operates diagnostic imaging services across four other locations. The service at Harley Street consists of two diagnostic rooms with three dedicated Cone Beam CT (CBCT) scanners and one CBCT-panoramic (OPG)-cephalometric unit. The centre is in the basement of a building and the unit is co-located with another healthcare service.

Patients are greeted by the receptionist and wait in the common ground-floor waiting room before being invited down to the basement unit via the stairs or the lift.

The service provides specialist diagnostic imaging services for adults, and children and young people.

We inspected diagnostic imaging services for Harley Street using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried an unannounced visit to the service on 24 September 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.

We rated Cavendish Imaging Harley Street as good overall.

• There were effective systems in place to protect patients from harm and a good incident reporting culture. Learning from incident investigations was disseminated to staff.

• 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.

• Staff carried out safety checks in line with the Society and College of Radiographers’ “Paused and Checked” checklist.

• Staff used evidence based care and treatment in line with national guidelines and local policies. The Local Rules were up to date and available on site, outlining the specific imaging procedures as well as the staff assessed as competent to use the equipment. There was an appointed radiation protection supervisor, a radiation protection advisor and a medical physics expert.

• Feedback for the service inspected was positive. Staff respected confidentiality, dignity and privacy of patients.

• Services were developed to meet the needs of patients. Staff were aware of people’s individual needs and considered these when providing care. The service accepted patients on a walk-in basis with no appointment required.

• We saw good local leadership within the department and staff reflected this in their conversation with us. There was a positive culture in the unit and members of staff said they could raise concerns with the leadership team.

• The leadership team had a clear vision and there were action plans in place to achieve this. There was a governance structure in place, both within the unit and the organisation as a whole.

• There was evidence of staff engagement and patients were engaged through feedback forms.

• The diagnostic service had implemented a number of innovative services and developed these to meet patient’s needs. Staff had contributed to developing and improving services.

Dr Nigel Acheson

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (London and South)