VHK Women's Health Clinic

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• Overview
• Shared direction and culture
• Capable, compassionate and inclusive leaders
• Freedom to speak up
• Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion
• Governance, management and sustainability
• Partnerships and communities
• Learning, improvement and innovation

The service was extremely well managed. The 2 doctors who owned the service used leadership, governance, and culture to drive and improve the delivery of high-quality person-centred care. They were passionate, inclusive, and demonstrated high levels of experience, capacity, and capability to deliver excellent treatment and sustainable care. Strategies and plans were fully aligned with the wider health economy and there was a commitment to system wide collaboration and leadership. The 2 doctors who owned the service had an inspiring shared purpose to ensure patients were empowered and received exceptional treatment and care.

This service scored 93 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The 2 doctors who owned the service had a strong vision for empowering the public to have a greater understanding of women’s health issues. Doctors ensured the culture and vision for the service was fully embedded in all the care and treatment they provided. The 2 doctors who owned the service had comprehensive leadership strategies in place to sustain delivery of the service and to develop the open and transparent culture which the service was based on. They felt this gave the best opportunities for delivering a high standard of sustainable treatment to patients.

The service had a shared vision, values and strategy policy in place that was developed by the two co-directors. The aim of the service was to deliver a holistic approach to women’s health care. The service strategy was based on building the business through feedback, engaging with the community, and supporting patients in the clinic and within the community. The values of the service were based on putting the woman at the centre of what they do, offering time, an evidenced based approach, and a plan for each woman dependent on her needs.

The 2 doctors who owned the service had the experience, capacity, and capability to ensure the organisational visions were delivered, and risks were well managed. They were knowledgeable about issues and priorities for the quality and future of the service. The doctors used engagement and public events to offer guidance to a wider audience than those who paid for a bespoke service. This meant they could be more inclusive to the local community.

The 2 doctors who owned the service had attended leadership training including strategy development for their organisation, financial strategic planning, and quality of decision-making tools. The service was passionate about development and providing skills and knowledge to GPs and allied healthcare professionals. For example, they led an education course for GP trainees on women’s health.

The 2 doctors who owned the service felt able to speak freely and felt this was a benefit of being a smaller service. They shared visions and values and were able to share concerns as well as things which were going well. They had external support which fully supported them to be open and honest.

The service had a freedom to speak up policy. Both doctors had completed freedom to speak up training and had mentors outside of the organisation who they could speak to and raise concerns with. The service encouraged a positive culture where both doctors felt they could speak up and that their voice would be heard.

The 2 doctors who owned the service had capacity within the service to take on new patients without increasing staffing. They rented one clinic room which was adequate for their needs and had the use of the receptionist who greeted all people coming into the building.

The service had an equality and diversity policy and we saw evidence the 2 doctors who owned the service had completed equality and diversity training.

The 2 doctors who owned the service proactively reviewed governance arrangements to ensure they reflected the guidance for best practice. As a partnership both leaders reviewed each other’s work and gave feedback, checked for outcomes and learning so they could continually improve the level of service they provided. They were fully committed to getting the best possible outcomes for women by listening, offering support and advice and where required a treatment plan.

There were clear and robust governance, management, and accountability arrangements and staff understood their roles and responsibilities. The 2 doctors who owned the service used information effectively to monitor and improve the quality of care. They held quarterly governance and clinical meetings. We observed topics including feedback, significant events, audits, safety alerts and case-based discussions were all standing agenda items. The service had a business continuity plan (BCP) in place to deal with emergencies and major incidents. There were clear arrangements in place for the availability, integrity and confidentiality of data, records, and data management systems.

The service provided us with feedback they received following events they delivered and contributed to. Patients spoke positively and said they were informative, supportive, and grateful for the professional advice. We also received feedback from the educational events they put on for healthcare professionals. The feedback was positive, and patients said it improved their knowledge and inspired them to do further training. Further feedback from a healthcare professional stated that the service had developed a great network for healthcare professionals.

The 2 doctors who owned the service spoke passionately about their shared vision of being able to empower patients to improve their own health both perimenopause and during the menopause. Both doctors were certified educators and gave time to speak at public events and to educate other professionals. They felt the educational part of their work was key to helping patients and getting improved outcomes for them in the future whether through a paid for service or the NHS and was an important part of the service they provided. They had received approval from the regional General Practice Training Scheme to provide additional support and education to doctors.

Partners were very positive in their feedback about the leaders of the service and the additional support they provided to the community. They used words such as ‘empowering’ and ‘knowledgeable’ to describe staff who spoke at shared events. Partners said they really appreciated the holistic approach the service had taken about the management of women’s health conditions. Partners had found it useful to be given information and additional resources such as audio-visual aids and films about things such as weight management to share with people who attended the events.

The service had delivered and participated in many events in women’s health to the local community and to health care professionals. The service had strong links with the community and educating people on women’s health was seen as a high priority. For example, one event they were guest speakers at a local menopause group to participate in a question-and-answer session. This was something the service aimed to continue to develop as they recognised the importance of these, and this was shown in the feedback they received. The service provided us with an action plan for areas of improvements for the future. One of the areas they were aiming to improve was to carry on supporting women’s health in the community through charity events. The aim of this was to continue to educate and support women with better self-care to improve their health.

The 2 doctors who owned the service had a fully embedded consistent approach to improvement. They used their knowledge and additional training and resources to seek out and embed new and innovative ways of working. They shared their learning through being members of national and local organisations where best practice could be shared with a range of professionals such as nurses, pharmacists and GPs. They had approval to recruit patients to take part in clinical trials for the use of testosterone as part of hormone replacement therapy and were part of a focus group for the menopause for NHS England (the organisation which leads the NHS in England).

The service had strong external relationships that supported improvement and innovation. The 2 doctors who owned the service engaged with external work including research and embedded evidence-based practice in the organisation. There was a clear focus on continuous learning and improvement. The 2 doctors who owned the service reflected on their work and patient outcomes and they prioritised time to develop their skills around improvement and innovation. For example, they participated in case reviews of patients that had attended the service. This provided doctors with an opportunity to reflect and improve the service they offered. The 2 doctors who owned the service supported continued professional development for other clinicians working externally to the service. For example, The 2 doctors who owned the service set up an educational programme for trainee doctors to teach, train and educate in the areas of contraception, women’s health, and menopause. They recognised that more training was needed for GP registrars to gain further knowledge in women’s health. There were processes in place to ensure learning took place to make improvements to the service. They had made changes to the letters they sent to a patient’s GP following their appointment. This was based on feedback they had received.