Archived: The Slimming Clinic Ltd

Updated 1 November 2021

The provider was registered by CQC on 14 July 2021 in respect of the regulated activity of Treatment of disease, disorder or injury (TDDI).

The provider operates from their registered address; however, most staff are working remotely.

The Slimming Clinic is an independent provider of online and telephone services to support people lose weight across the United Kingdom. This can include prescribed medicines, counselling, dietary and movement advice.

Adults can schedule online or telephone appointments by phone or via the website initially with a doctor. Following an initial consultation, a face to face assessment may be required and undertaken by a separate provider to assess the patient’s health. The service offers patients a range of treatment programmes to aid or maintain weight loss.

The core opening times of the service are as follows:

• Monday - 8.30am to 9pm
• Tuesday - 8.30am to 6pm
• Wednesday - 8.30am to 9pm
• Thursday - 8.30am to 6pm
• Friday - 8.30am to 5pm
• Saturday - 9.30am to 3pm
• Sunday – closed

Information regarding the service can be found on the provider’s website – https://theslimmingclinic.com

How we inspected this service

Before the inspection, we gathered and reviewed information from the provider. We conducted an onsite inspection of the registered location including interviews with the services nominated individual and registered manager. Further online interviews and telephone calls were held with support staff and prescribers. We reviewed a range of the provider’s policies and procedures and patient consultation records. We did not speak with service users, but received direct feedback following the service circulating details of CQC’s Give Feedback on Care webpage. We reviewed the feedback received by CQC and reviewed other sources where their feedback was recorded.

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 1 November 2021

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

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out our first announced comprehensive inspection at The Slimming Clinic as part of our inspection programme following the registration of a new service.

The Slimming Clinic provides an online and telephone service to support people to manage their weight across the United Kingdom. This can include prescribed medicines and lifestyle advice including, counselling, dietary and movement advice.

The service manager 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 service is run.

As the service is provided remotely, they were asked to email patients who had an appointment with a doctor during the week of the inspection. The email invited the patients to provide feedback via the CQC ‘Give feedback on care’ web page. Five patients provided feedback via the website. Four patients provided very positive feedback. The feedback focused on staff listening and wanting to understand what they [the patient] wanted to achieve. However, one patient raised a concern in their feedback, but they also highlighted the way staff listened.

Our key findings were:

• Patients were positive about the staff and the service
• Staff displayed an understanding and non-judgmental attitude to all patients
• Prescribing and record keeping were in line with the provider’s policies
• There was a focus on continuous learning and improvement

We saw the following outstanding practice:

• The service had undertaken a clinical review of the effectiveness of the weight loss programmes offered by the service. This included a comparison to alternative weight loss providers. A further clinic review assessed the effectiveness of the different medicines they prescribed. Following the reviews, additional mandatory fields were added to the patient record system to improve the consistency of patient records.
• Reasonable adjustments were made for people who found reading and writing difficult through the recording of consent verbally.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The service should record the discussion and decision to prescribe unlicensed medicines where alternative licensed medicines are available.

Dr Rosie Benneyworth BM BS BMedSci MRCGP
Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Integrated Care