Archived: Apricity Fertility

Updated 10 October 2022

Apricity Fertility’s head office is located at 38 Chancery Lane, The Cursitor, London WC2A 1EN. The service website can be accessed through the following link https://www.apricity.life/.

The provider offers solely online consultations, gynaecology services, counselling and psychotherapy, fertility services and reproductive health.

The services operating hours are between 7am to 9pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 1pm on weekends and bank holidays. There is on call emergency nurse availability until 9pm on weekdays and from 1pm until 9pm on weekends and bank holidays. Patients also have a mobile app instructing them to call 111 or 999 in the event of an emergency.

How we inspected this service

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 inspection we:

• Spoke with staff (COO and co-founder, medical director, nurse, fertility advisor team leader and fertility advisor).

• Reviewed personnel files, practice policies and procedures and other records concerned with running the service.

• Reviewed a sample of records.

• Looked at information the service used to deliver care and treatment plans.

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 10 October 2022

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 an announced comprehensive inspection at Apricity Fertility as part of our inspection programme. The service registered with CQC on 31 October 2019. 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. This is the first inspection of this service following registration with CQC.

Apricity Fertility is a private health clinic in central London which specialises in offering specialist support, guidance and sharing fertility treatment instructions decided by their partner clinics for people who require fertility investigations, treatment and/or support. A complete list of services can be found on the clinic’s website.

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 service and these are set out in Schedule 2 of The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014. Apricity Fertility is registered in respect of the provision of treatment of diseases, disorder or injury. Therefore, we were only able to inspect the clinical consultations, examinations and treatments for those services registered with CQC.

The Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Co-founder 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.

Our key findings were:

• There was an effective system in place for reporting and recording significant events.
• Risks to patients were assessed and monitored.
• There was a system in place to receive safety alerts issued by government departments such as the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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 patients, which it acted on.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Ensure clinical staff are trained to the correct level of safeguarding for their role.
• Undertake quality improvement work in the form of full cycle clinical audits to help improve patient outcomes.
• Provide accessible services for patients who are deaf or do not speak English as a first language.
• Restrict access to complaint data within the mobile app to appropriate people to protect patients and staff.

Dr Sean O’Kelly BSc MB ChB MSc DCH FRCA

Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Interim Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services