Archived: Blackberry Orthopaedic Clinic - Croydon

Updated 4 October 2019

Blackberry Orthopaedic Clinic – Croydon is located at 32 Mayday Road, Croydon, Surrey CR7 7HL. The provider Blackberry Clinic Limited has nine other clinics located across the south of England and in Scotland. These locations are registered separately with the Care Quality Commission and Health Improvement Scotland. The service website can be accessed through the following link  www.blackberryclinic.co.uk

The provider offers health screenings and physiotherapy. The service offers specialised treatment of musculoskeletal conditions including back pain, sports injuries and chronic pain conditions to mainly for adults over the age of 18. The service is open between 8am and 4pm Monday to Friday and fortnightly on Saturdays.

The provider is registered with the Care Quality Commission to provide the regulated activities diagnostic and screening procedures and treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

Before visiting, we reviewed a range of information we hold about the service and asked them to send us some pre- inspection information which we reviewed.

During our visit we:

• Spoke with a range of staff from the service including the registered manager, health advisor and the quality and compliance manager.
• Reviewed a sample of records.
• Reviewed comment cards where clients had shared their views and experiences of the service.
• Looked at information the service used to deliver care and treatment plans.

To get to the heart of clients’ 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 October 2019

The service is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Requires Improvement

Are services effective? – Good

Are services caring? – Good

Are services responsive? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection at Blackberry Orthopaedic Clinic – Croydon on 27 August 2019. This inspection was to rate the service and is the first inspection at the service since it is registered with Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Blackberry Orthopaedic Clinic – Croydon is an independent provider of services to treat back pain and sports injuries services. They offer a range of specialist diagnostic services and treatments, which include health assessments, osteopathic medicine and physiotherapy.

This service is registered with Care Quality Commission (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 services and these are set out in of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. Blackberry Orthopaedic Clinic - Croydon is registered in respect of the provision of treatment of diseases, disorder or injury; Diagnostic and screening procedures. Therefore, we were only able to inspect the health screening service as well as clinical consultations, examinations and treatments in general medicine for example; musculoskeletal and sports medicine.

The quality and compliance 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 part of our inspection we asked for CQC comment cards to be completed by clients prior to our inspection visit. We received 20 comment cards which were wholly positive about the service and nature of staff. The cards reflected the kind, friendly helpful and caring nature of staff, how informative staff were and the time taken with patients. Other forms of feedback, including patient surveys and social media feedback which we saw was consistently positive.

Our key findings were:

• There was an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events.
• Risks to patients were not always assessed and monitored.
• Staff had the skills, knowledge, and experience to deliver effective care and treatment. Staff assessed patients’ needs and delivered care in line with current evidence-based guidance.
• To ensure and monitor the quality of the service, the service completed audits which showed the effectiveness of the service.
• Information about services and how to complain was available and easy to understand.
• The provider was aware of and complied with the requirements of the Duty of Candour.
• All patients said they were treated with compassion, dignity, and respect and they were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• The service had good facilities and was well equipped to treat patients and meet their needs.
• The service held a range of policies and procedures which were in place to govern activity; staff were able to access these policies.
• We saw there was leadership within the service and the team worked together in a cohesive, supported, and open manner.
• The service proactively sought feedback from staff and patients, which it acted on. Regular surveys were undertaken, and reports collated from the findings and action taken where required.

The areas where the provider must make improvements as they are in breach of regulations are:

• Ensure that care and treatment is provider in a safe way.

There were areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Consider a central recording system to monitor implementation of medicines and safety alerts.

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