Archived: Docklands Healthcare

Updated 9 May 2019

Docklands Healthcare is operated by HCA Healthcare UK. The service opened in October 2010. It offers private diagnostic tests and treatment and outpatient consultations for patients.

The centre was established to service the Canary Wharf living and working community with diagnostic and consultation facilities. The centre forms part of the wider London Bridge Hospital campus and as such falls under the same governance umbrella and is led by the same chief executive officer. Historically, the centre was just for diagnostic appointments. However, the location had created space for consulting rooms so that the service could work more closely with the private GP practice based within the same building. This means that patients were offered fast and convenient access to a wide range of services ensuring timely diagnosis and management. The centre offers rapid appointments for its diagnostic services; including MRI, x-ray and ultrasound.

The hospital has had a registered manager in post since June 2017.

Updated 9 May 2019

Docklands Healthcare is operated by HCA International Limited UK. Docklands Healthcare is one of five satellite sites that sits under the umbrella of the London Bridge Hospital campus. The centre provides fast access to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), x-ray, ultrasound diagnostics and outpatient clinics in the following specialties: orthopaedics, neurology, gastroenterology and gynaecology.

The service has three consultation rooms, three changing cubicles, x-ray room, ultrasound room and MRI.

The service provides care and treatment to patients who self-pay or whose insurance company pays for their care.

We inspected this service using our comprehensive inspection methodology. We carried out an unannounced inspection on 7 March 2019.

To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we ask the same five questions of all services: are they safe, effective, caring, responsive to people's needs, and well-led? Where we have a legal duty to do so we rate services’ performance against each key question as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

Throughout the inspection, we took account of what people told us and how the provider understood and complied with the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Services we rate

We have not previously rated this service. We rated it as Good overall.

We found good practice:

• The centre was clean and tidy and staff displayed a good understanding of infection prevention and control.

• The service disseminated learning from incidents through debriefing, incident newsletters, local risk registers, team meetings and emails.

• There were effective systems at the centre to ensure patient safety. All staff were aware of their roles and responsibilities in ensuring patients and their relatives were safe.

• Staff were positive about their working experience and felt supported to be part of a team.

• Patients comments and feedback about the service was positive.

• Staff demonstrated kindness and an understanding of how to meet patients’ needs.

• The service continually acted on audits to continually identify opportunities for benchmarking and improvement.

• Medicines were managed appropriately by the service.

• The service did not have a waiting list and had no delayed or cancelled appointments for non-clinical reasons in the previous 12 months.

• Staff felt valued and described effective teamwork. Staff were confident to escalate concerns if needed.

• Docklands Healthcare was part of London Bridge Hospital campus governance structure. Each campus had their own local governance team who conducted regular visits whilst the governance facilitator was the site link.

However, we also found the following issues that the service provider needs to improve:

• Although the service completed a simulated emergency exercise in x-ray, the service did not practice the emergency evacuation procedure for patients and staff in MRI. 

Nigel Acheson

Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals (South and London)

Updated 9 May 2019

We rated diagnostic imaging as good. We rated this service as good because it was safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led.