Archived: MASTA Travel Clinic Oxford

Updated 12 March 2019

The head office for the provider MASTA Limited (Medical Advisory Services for Travellers Abroad) is based in Leeds. They have many pharmacy and nurse-led travel clinics located throughout England, Wales and Ireland and have been established for over 30 years.

For this inspection we visited the location at MASTA Travel Clinic Oxford, based at a travel agent in Oxford city centre. Opening hours for the Oxford MASTA clinic are two days a week during normal working hours. Clients could contact MASTA customer services when the clinic was closed.

MASTA Travel Clinic Oxford provides a comprehensive travel service including pre-travel assessments, travel vaccinations and travel health advice. All services incur a consultation charge to the client. Treatment and intervention charges vary, dependent upon what is provided. The service is also a registered Yellow Fever Vaccination Centre.

The address of the service is:

MASTA Travel Clinic, Flight Centre Oxford, 9-10 Queen Street, Oxford, OX1 1EJ

Our inspection team was led by a CQC Lead Inspector and a Nurse Specialist Advisor.

We inspected this service on 1 February 2019. During our visit we:

• Spoke with two members of staff.

• Reviewed documents and policies.
• Looked at the computer system for record keeping and staff information.
• Reviewed Care Quality Commission comment cards.

The service provided background information which was reviewed prior to the inspection. We did not receive any information of concern from other organisations.

To get to the heart of clients’ 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 12 March 2019

We carried out an announced comprehensive inspection of MASTA Travel Clinic Oxford on 1 February 2019 to ask the service the following key questions; Are services safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led?

Our findings were:

Are services safe?

We found that this service was providing safe care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services effective?

We found that this service was providing effective care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services caring?

We found that this service was providing caring services in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services responsive?

We found that this service was providing responsive care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Are services well-led?

We found that this service was providing well-led care in accordance with the relevant regulations.

Start this section with the following sentence.

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. 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 was the first inspection at Masta Travel Clinic Oxford. The service registered to provide regulated activities in February 2018.

The lead nurse 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.

As part of our inspection we asked for Care Quality Commission comment cards to be completed by clients prior to our inspection visit. We received nine comment cards, all of which were positive about the standard of care received.

Our key findings were:

• Systems were in place to protect people from avoidable harm and abuse. When mistakes occurred lessons were learned.
• There were effective arrangements in place for the management of vaccines and medicines.
• The service had arrangements in place to respond to medical emergencies.
• Staff were aware of current evidence based guidance. Staff had been trained to provide them with the skills and knowledge to deliver effective care and treatment.
• Client survey information and Care Quality Commission (CQC) comment cards reviewed indicated that clients were very satisfied with the service they received. Clients commented that they were treated with compassion, dignity and respect and were involved in their care and decisions about their treatment.
• Information about the service and how to complain was available.
• There was a clear leadership structure and staff felt supported by management and worked very well together as a team. The provider was aware of and complied with the Duty of Candour.
• There was an additional safety mechanism on the service’s computer system which automatically selected appropriate vaccinations and ensured only in date vaccinations were administered and correct serial numbers recorded.
• Learning from serious incidents led to improvement in safety systems.

Professor Steve Field CBE FRCP FFPH FRCGPChief Inspector of General Practice