We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection on 1 May 2018 to ask the service the following key questions; Are services safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led?

Our findings were:

Are services safe?

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

Are services effective?

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

Are services caring?

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

Are services responsive?

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

Are services well-led?

We found that this service was providing well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the service was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

Prior to our inspection, patients completed CQC comment cards telling us about their experiences of using the service. Eleven people provided feedback about the service, all of which was positive about the care and treatment experiences, and the prompt access to services.

Our key findings were:

• When incidents happened, the service learned from them and improved.
• The service reviewed the effectiveness and appropriateness of the care it provided. It ensured that care and treatment was delivered according to evidence- based guidelines.
• Staff involved and treated patients with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
• Services were provided to meet the needs of patients.
• Patient feedback about the services provided was consistently positive.
• There were clear responsibilities, roles and systems of accountability to support good management.
• The service’s systems to manage risks had not suitably addressed infection prevention and control risks, ensured suitable arrangements for dealing with medical emergencies or responding to patient safety alerts.

We identified areas where the service could improve and should:

• Review arrangements to ensure the infection prevention and control (IPC) arrangements in the dental service are in line with published guidelines.
• Review their current stock of medicines for treating medical emergencies to ensure they are in line with published recommendations.
• Review their safeguarding children and young people policy to reflect additional current topics of concern and their adult safeguarding policy to reflect the correct local contacts for escalating concerns.
• Review the functionality of their records system to ensure they can systematically search records and verify the relevance of medicines and safety alerts to their patient population.
• Demonstrate quality improvement through follow up audit cycles.
• Review their arrangements for reviewing and where necessary acting on safety alerts including patient, medicine and device safety alerts.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGP

Chief Inspector of General Practice