English Institute of Sport - Loughborough

Updated 12 January 2023

The English Institute of Sport – Loughborough is part of a wider organisation, The English Institute of Sport Limited. The English Institute of Sport provides care and treatment to elite athletes across six registered locations.

The English Institute of Sport – Loughborough is located at Loughborough Performance Centre, Loughborough University, Loughborough, LE11 3TU. It is registered to provide diagnostic and screening regulated activities from this site. This location also has a branch site located at Holme Pierrepont National Water Sports Centre, Adbolton Lane, Nottingham, NG12 2LU. This branch site was not visited as part of the inspection.

The service has a website at www.eis2win.co.uk

We were told the team consists of five sports and exercise physicians, 17 physiotherapists, nutritionistalists, strength and conditioning coaches, an operations lead, and a team of administration support. All doctors are listed on the specialist register of sport and exercise medicine.

The service treated both adult and child athletes.

How we inspected this service

Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.

This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.

We carried out this inspection on 12 December 2022. Before visiting the service, we looked at a range of information that we hold about the service. We reviewed information submitted by the service in response to our provider information request. During our visit we interviewed staff and reviewed documentation.

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

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it well-led?

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

Updated 12 January 2023

This service is rated as Good overall.

The key questions are rated as:

Are services safe? – Good

Are services effective? – Good

Are services well-led? – Good

We carried out an announced focussed inspection at English Institute of Sport – Loughborough on 12 December 2022 to follow up on breaches of regulation we found during our previous inspection. We inspected the key questions of safe, effective and well led. The key questions of caring and responsive were rated as good at the last inspection and were not inspected as part of this follow up inspection. Their previous rating of good still stands.

At the previous inspection in July 2022 we found a breach of Regulation 17, good governance, regarding the oversight of training, premises and infection prevention and control. The provider was rated as inadequate overall with ratings of inadequate in safe and well led, and requires improvement for effective. In this inspection we found improvements had been made to effectively comply with Regulation 17.

This service is registered with the 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 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.

The operations 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.

The location is registered to carry out diagnostic and screening regulated activities.

Our key findings were:

• Governance processes had been put in place for service leaders to have oversight of requirements within the service.
• There were processes in place to manage infection prevention and control, and staff had received infection control training.
• There was a system to identify training requirements for staff and leaders who had oversight of training completion.
• There was evidence of systems and processes for learning, continuous improvement and innovation. For example, clinical audits and learning from incidents were being completed within the service and at a national level.
• Staff dealt with athletes with kindness and respect and involved them in decisions about their care.
• The service organised and delivered services to allow athletes to access care and treatment in a timely way.

I am taking this service out of special measures. This recognises the significant improvements that have been made to the quality of care provided by this service.

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