Meyerhealth Ltd

Updated 4 July 2023

Meyerhealth Ltd is a small independent service led by the medical director, a single GP who specialises in dermatology, minor surgery and women’s health. Services include GP consultations, phlebotomy and minor surgical procedures, including the excision of moles and other skin lesions.

The service also provides non-regulated aesthetic treatments, for example, anti-wrinkle injections, dermal fillers and thread vein treatments, as well as nutritional advice and therapies, which are not within CQC scope of registration.

The Registered Provider is Meyerhealth Ltd.

Meyerhealth Ltd is located at Main Road, Fishbourne, Chichester, West Sussex, PO18 8AN.

The clinic opening times are:

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: 08:00 to 16:00

Wednesday 08:00 to 18:00

The staff team which supports the medical director includes a practice manager, a registered nurse, a clinical assistant and a receptionist.

Services are provided from newly constructed, self-contained, two storey premises which are owned by the provider. The premises had been developed since our previous inspection, within the grounds of the shared premises from which services were previously provided. Construction of the premises had been completed in March 2023.

The premises provide a high standard of accommodation which includes a suite of spacious consulting and treatment rooms, administration and staff breakout areas.

Patients access to the premises is via a ramp at street level, to support patients with limited mobility. Patients enter the premises via a large open reception and waiting area. Toilet facilities are located on the ground floor. A patient lift is installed within the premises to support access to the first floor. The lift was not in use at the time of our inspection but patients with limited mobility could be provided with care within one of the ground floor consulting rooms. The provider told us that these arrangements were temporary whilst they awaited installation of an evacuation device, to ensure such patients could be safely evacuated from the first floor of the premises, in the event of an emergency.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:

Is it safe?

Is it effective?

Is it caring?

Is it responsive to people’s needs?

Is it well-led?

These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.

Updated 4 July 2023

This service is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good (carried over from previous inspection)

Are services responsive? – Good (carried over from previous inspection)

Are services well-led? – Good

We previously carried out a comprehensive inspection of Meyerhealth Ltd on 21 June 2022. We identified breaches of regulation 12 (Safe care and treatment) and regulation 17 (Good governance) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. We issued a regulation 12 warning notice and regulation 17 requirement notice. The service was rated as inadequate for providing safe services, requires improvement for providing effective and well-led services, and good for providing caring and responsive services. The service was rated as requires improvement overall.

We carried out a further focused inspection on 22 September 2022 to confirm the provider had taken sufficient action to comply with the regulation 12 warning notice issued.

We carried out this announced comprehensive inspection of Meyerhealth Ltd on 5 June 2023 under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008. 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. At this inspection we checked that the service was providing safe, effective and well-led services. Our ratings of good for caring and responsive services are carried over from the previous inspection.

How we carried out the inspection:

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site.

This included:

• Speaking with staff in person, on the telephone and using video conferencing.
• Requesting documentary evidence from the provider.
• A site visit.

We carried out an announced site visit to the service on 5 June 2023. Prior to our visit we requested documentary evidence electronically from the provider. We spoke to staff on the telephone and using video conferencing prior to our site visit.

Meyerhealth Ltd is a small independent service, led by the medical director, a GP who specialises in dermatology, minor surgery and women’s health. Services include GP consultations, phlebotomy and minor surgical procedures, including the excision of moles and other skin lesions.

This service is registered with CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 in respect of some, but not all, of the services it provides. There are some exemptions from regulation by CQC which relate to particular types of regulated activities and services, and these are set out in Schedule 1 and Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. Meyerhealth Ltd provides a wide range of non-surgical aesthetic interventions and anti-ageing treatments, for example, anti-wrinkle injections, dermal fillers and thread vein treatments, which are not within CQC scope of registration. Therefore, we did not inspect or report on these services.

Meyerhealth Ltd is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the following regulated activities: Treatment of disease, disorder or injury, Diagnostic and screening procedures and Surgical procedures.

There was no registered manager for the service at the time of our inspection, further to recent changes in personnel. 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 service is run. The medical director told us they were in the process of submitting their application to register as the registered manager.

Our key findings were:

• Clinical staff had the relevant skills, knowledge and experience to deliver the care and treatment offered by the service.
• There were processes in place for the induction, training and monitoring of staff.
• There were safeguarding systems and processes to keep people safe.
• There were records to demonstrate that staff recruitment checks had been carried out in accordance with regulations for all staff.
• Arrangements for chaperoning were effectively managed.
• There were processes to assess the risk of, and prevent, detect and control the spread of infection.
• There were governance, risk assessment and monitoring processes to ensure the safety of the newly developed premises.
• Some actions to address findings from a disability access risk assessment remained outstanding.
• There were systems in place to ensure the proper and safe storage of medicines and vaccines requiring refrigeration.
• There was evidence of clinical audit, and clinical decision making was in line with current, best practice guidance.
• Clinical record keeping was clear, comprehensive and complete.
• There was evidence of communication and information sharing amongst the small staff team.
• Staff were subject to regular review of their performance and felt well supported by managers.
• Written policies provided appropriate guidance to staff.
• Service users were asked to provide feedback on the service they had received and there were high levels of patient satisfaction across the service.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Complete outstanding actions to support access to the premises by patients with restricted mobility, in line with risk assessment findings.
• Complete works to ensure the safe external storage of clinical waste awaiting collection.
• Display current CQC inspection ratings clearly and conspicuously within the service.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Health Care