Eastbourne healthcare clinic temporarily shut down and rated ‘inadequate’

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has rated CVS Health Limited in Trinity Trees as ‘inadequate’ and has shut it down for eight weeks so that ‘urgent improvements can be made’.

Owned and managed by a team of partner consultant cardiologists, the site provides cardiac diagnostic and consultancy services to private patients in Kent and East Sussex.

According to the CQC, inspectors visited the service in June for the first time and due to ‘serious concerns about the safety of the service’, inspectors took immediate action and shut it down for eight weeks to make sure the clinic could improve.

A CQC spokesperson said the service was rated ‘inadequate’ overall, ‘inadequate’ for being safe and well-led, ‘requires improvement’ for being effective and responsive, and ‘good’ for being caring.

Amanda Williams, CQC’s head of hospital inspections, said, “We had several serious concerns when we inspected CVS Health Limited recently.

“So much so that we felt it necessary to suspend the service for eight weeks to protect people from risk of harm and to give the provider time to make urgent improvements.”

Ms Williams said staff had not been trained in how to deal with certain situations, emergency equipment was not checked regularly – the defibrillator had not been checked since April 2021 which she said ‘could have catastrophic consequences if the equipment failed when attempting to resuscitate someone’.

The inspection found there was no routine checking of the emergency call bell, and some vital emergency medication was out of date which Ms Williams called ‘completely unacceptable’.

She said, “We were also told by staff that although basic risk assessments were carried out when a patient arrived at the clinic by checking the patient’s referral letter, there had been occasions when the wrong patient was called to a clinical room, which could have ended up in the wrong procedure being carried out on that person.

“We have told the provider that it must now make urgent improvements to address all our concerns and the service has been temporarily closed to give them time to do this.

“We will review the progress made at the end of the eight-week closure and reinspect to check that sufficient improvements have been made. If they have not, we will decide what further action to take.”

Despite this, the inspection found positives including care being given ‘promptly’ with waiting times in line with the national standard, staff treated patients with ‘compassion and kindness’, and patient notes were up to date and stored securely.

The report also said, “The provider managed infection risk well. Staff used equipment and control measures to protect patients, themselves and others from infection. They kept equipment and the premises visibly clean.

“The service had a vision for what it wanted to achieve and a strategy to turn it into action. The vision and strategy were focused on sustainability of services and aligned to local plans within the wider health economy.”

The service was also found to treat patient concerns and complaints ‘seriously’.

The full report can be read here: https://www.cqc.org.uk/location/1-147702611/reports