Dr Shruthi Guruswamy (The Priory Hospital)

Updated 2 September 2021

SG Psychiatry Limited is a service consisting of a single Consultant Psychiatrist; Dr Guruswamy, and their personal assistant. The service was first registered with CQC in 2016. Across the three locations, the service currently has around 300 active patients registered with them.

This service provides outpatient mental health assessment and treatment for adults. Dr Guruswamy specialises in the treatment of mental and behavioural disorders including addictions and adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, this service has been delivering all appointments via video conferencing platforms. Prior to the pandemic Dr Guruswamy saw patients face to face at this location. This service’s operating hours are Monday to Thursday 7am to 4pm, and Friday 7am to 12pm.

The service is registered with CQC to undertake the following regulated activities:

• Treatment of Disease, Disorder or Injury

How we inspected this service

We used CQC’s interim methodology for monitoring services during the COVID-19 pandemic including on site and remote interactions.

During the inspection visit to the service, the inspection team:

• visited the premises where face to face services are provided
• spoke with Dr Guruswamy and their personal assistant
• received feedback from four patients
• reviewed five patient care and treatment records
• reviewed information and documents relating to the operation and management of the service.
  

You can find further information about how we carry out our inspections on our website: www.cqc.org.uk/what-we-do/how-we-do-our-job/what-we-do-inspection.

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 2 September 2021

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 Dr Shruthi Guruswamy (The Priory Hospital) as part of our inspection programme.

SG Psychiatry Limited provides independent doctor services specialising in adult mental health at three locations, The Priory Hospital is one of these locations. We inspected all three locations at the same time.

Dr Shruthi Guruswamy 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.

For this location we received feedback from four patients. In total, we received feedback from ten patients across the three locations. This was received from both telephone interviews and through CQC’s online Give Feedback on Care form. All of the feedback we received was very positive, describing a caring, kind and professional service.

Our key findings were:

• Patients reported staff were supportive, caring and helpful. They felt involved in decisions about their care and felt listened to.
  
  
• The service assessed patients’ treatment needs holistically. Patients at risk of physical health problems linked to their mental health concerns or treatment had investigations or were referred to specialists.
  
  
• The service made timely referrals to a range of external services when needed to support patient’s holistic recovery.
  

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• The service should ensure its revised systems and processes support the timely referral of safeguarding concerns.
  
  
• The service should consider the training and development needs of the service’s personal assistant to ensure she is able to carry out her duties safely and effectively.
  
  
• The service should continue to review and update their policy and procedures around prescribing to ensure it complies with current GMC guidance. During the inspection we found parts of the service’s medicine prescribing policy was lacking detail, for example, ensuring professionals have sufficient information to prescribe and what to consider before prescribing. We discussed this with the provider during the inspection and they have subsequently updated their medicines prescribing policy to reflect current GMC guidance.
  
  
• Leaders should ensure they have assurances and oversite of the performance of their service. Whilst the service completed audits into some areas of practice, they did not routinely audit clinician’s consultations, prescribing and referral decisions.