Meet Your Miracle - Coventry is operated by Professional Antenatal Services Limited. It is a small independent health care service providing pregnancy ultrasound scanning services in the West Midlands area. It is an independent single specialty provider of keepsake/souvenir baby scans using diagnostic ultrasound equipment. The service carries out ultrasound scans in pregnancy for the purpose of bonding and reassurance rather than for clinical purposes or as part of a pregnancy pathway of care.

No screening or medical advice was provided.

Facilities include one scanning room and reception area. A toilet was available. The service operates two further locations to the Coventry location. One in Tamworth and one in Nottingham. Both of these units have a single consultation room and a reception/waiting area with a toilet.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out the unannounced part of the inspection on 2 May 2019.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care, 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.

The only service provided by this facility was ultrasound baby imaging for non-diagnostic purposes.

Services we rate

We rated it as Good overall.

We found areas of good practice:

• All sonographers were observed as part of a peer observation and manager observations process. The sonographers, including the registered manager carried out scans together and with an external practicing sonographer periodically and annually as part of the personal review procedure/process.

• Staff cared for women with compassion, kindness and respect. They involved women and those close to them in decisions about their care and treatment.

• Women could access services and appointments in a way and time that suited them.

• The registered manager had a vision, where the delivery of quality care was the top priority, and the staff worked to achieve it.

• The service promoted a positive culture.

• The provider monitored scan image quality outcomes.

• The provider understood how and when to assess whether a woman had the capacity to make decisions about their care.

• Services provided generally reflected the needs of the population served and individual needs were taken into account.

We found areas of practice that require improvement:

• Infection risk was not always controlled well. While the equipment and premises were clean, disposable paper towel was not used to cover the examination couch. The service used a cotton towel, and this was not changed between each woman. Staff told us the towel was changed each day. While hand washing facilities were available in the toilet, disposable paper hand towels were not available. Staff and patients shared a cotton towel which was changed daily.

• Two of the four sonographers’ disclosure and barring service checks (DBS) had not been checked since 2013. While DBS checks (also called disclosure) have no official expiry date it is considered good practice to review DBSs every three years.

• The service did not have the facility, to provide information to women prior to their ultrasound scan appointment, in any other language but English. In addition, non-English speaking women using the service did not have access to a translation service that could be used during an appointment.

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

Amanda Stanford

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (Central)