A private health clinic in Ealing has been put under special measures following a visit by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). In a report, CQC called West London Diagnostic Limited “inadequate”after finding equipment being used was dirty and not being maintained to the standards CQC expects.
If improvements are not made, the CQC said: “we will move to close the service by adopting our proposal to vary the provider’s registration to remove this location or cancel the provider’s registration.”
According to its website, West London Diagnostic Limited, based in Ealing Physio practice on South Ealing Road, offers: “a large variety of diagnostic and interventional procedures such as Musculoskeletal guided injections.”
When inspectors arrived on 9 September 2022 they were concerned by what the found.
On cleanliness, they were considerable issues the inspector reported:
“We found that there was no cleaning log for the ultrasound machine to indicate when it had last been cleaned. During our inspection we saw that the ultrasound machine had visible traces of gel, ink from a pen and dust. We found that there was no cleaning log for the clinic room, chairs or examination couch. This was an infection control risk and may expose service users to the risk of harm as it was not possible to know when the room and equipment had last been cleaned. The service told us a domestic cleaner was employed to clean the clinic rooms, toilet and waiting areas but we did not see cleaning logs for these.”
For safeguarding, the inspectors said: “when we reviewed the safeguarding policy we found that it referred to an out of date version of the Working Together to Safeguard Children national guidance from 2010. We also found that the safeguarding policy did not include contact details or instructions on how to report safeguarding concerns.”
On its equipment, the inspector discovered that important checking of it was not being done.
“We also found that the ultrasound machine had not had a portable appliance test(PAT). Electrical equipment should be examined regularly to ensure they are safe to use. This is a potential risk to service users as the ultrasound machine had not been checked for electrical defects. The service did not undertake quality assurance for the ultrasound machine. This meant that the service was not ensuring that consistent, reliable results were being recorded and were not checking for deterioration of equipment performance which could negatively impact on service user safety.”
The inspector has issued a number of improvements that the clinic must make, these include:
The service must ensure that the ultrasound machine is regularly serviced and PAT tested.
The service must ensure there is a cleaning log for the ultrasound machine, clinic room, chairs and examination couch.
The service must ensure that sharps bins are dated and signed when full.
The service must action the National Patient Safety alert in relation to the safe use of ultrasound gel to reduce infection risk.
The service must have its own medicines management policy with detail around the medicines and procedures specifically related to the provider.
The full report can be found here.
West London Diagnostic Limited were contacted for a comment.
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