We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of this service on 26 May 2015 as part of our regulatory functions where a breach of legal requirements was found. After the comprehensive inspection, the practice wrote to us to say what they would do to meet the legal requirements in relation to the breach.

We followed up on our inspection of 26 May 2015 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 have not revisited the Friern Barnet Dental Clinic as part of this review because Friern Barnet Dental Clinic were able to demonstrate that they were meeting the standards without the need for a visit.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the 'all reports' link for The Friern Barnet Dental Clinic on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection on 26 May 2015 to ask the practice the following key questions; Are services safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led?

Friern Barnet Dental Practice is located in the London Borough of Barnet and provides NHS and some private dental services to adults and children.

The practice team included two dentists, one of whom is the principal dentist, two dental nurses and a receptionist.

We reviewed 35 Care Quality Commission (CQC) comment cards completed by patients who were positive about the care they received from the practice. They commented that staff were caring, friendly and respectful.

The principal dentist 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 was meeting essential standards in relation to infection prevention and control practices including decontamination of used dental instruments.
• Staff had received training appropriate to their roles.
• Staff were knowledgeable about patient confidentiality and we observed good interaction

between staff and patients during the inspection.

• Patients were able to make routine and emergency appointments when needed.
• The patient comment cards we reviewed indicated that patients were consistently treated with kindness and respect by staff. It was reported that communication with patients, access to the service and to the dentists, was good. Patients reported good access to the practice.
• Risks to patients and staff had not been suitably assessed and mitigated. These included such as risk of fire, and those arising from use of portable equipment, recruitment of staff and lack of monitoring of temperature of the fridge used to store dental products.

We found that this practice was providing safe, effective, caring and responsive care in accordance with the relevant regulations. We also found that this practice was not providing well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

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 fire, portable equipment, fridge temperature, staff recruitment and any others relating to the health, safety and welfare of patients, staff and visitors.

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:

• Adopt an individual risk based approach to patient recalls having regard to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines.
• Review the practice’s protocols for the use of rubber dam for root canal treatment giving due regard to guidelines issued by the British Endodontic Society
• Review the practice's protocols for completion of dental records giving due regard to guidance provided by the Faculty of General Dental Practice regarding clinical examinations and record keeping.