The Harley Street Clinic rated outstanding by the CQC

The 103 bed hospital, with onsite intensive critical care support, provides acute and complex care to both adults and children across a range of specialities with a focus on cardiology, neurosciences and oncology.

CQC inspectors found that The Harley Street Clinic provides compassionate, individual care offered to all patients and that the ‘approachable and motivational’ leadership that promoted ‘high-quality patient centred care’. 

The high standards of medical care offered at The Harley Street Clinic were in particular marked out as outstanding with inspectors noting that the hospital;

• Provides ‘innovative’ and ‘patient centred’ cancer care giving patients ‘access to the latest diagnostic methods and new cancer drugs through early phase clinical trials’
• Participates in several national audits and benchmarking and in certain examples was found to exceed standards, particularly in cardiac care.
• Pioneered a new technique to spare hair follicles of patients undergoing radiotherapy to the brain to reduce hair loss and improve speed of regrowth following treatment.
• Collaborated with London Bridge Hospital, also part of HCA Healthcare, to be the first in the UK to trial a robotic radiosurgery system on cardiac patients.

The CQC also praised the hospital for going the extra mile to deliver exceptional patient care, commenting that ‘there was an ethos of staff going above and beyond their duty to support patient’s emotional and social needs’.

Some examples include;

• The Harley Street Clinic providing a healthcare assistant to enable a patient to attend his grandson’s Bar Mitzvah for a few hours.
• Weddings that had been organised on the ward to accommodate the last wishes of some terminally ill patients.
• Staff changing shifts to offer anxious patients continuity of care.

Aida Yousefi, CEO of The Harley Street Clinic, said

“I am immensely proud of the outstanding rating awarded to The Harley Street Clinic by the CQC for the compassionate, patient centred care we deliver in our tertiary hospital.

“Sharing this result with a team of excellent colleagues; noted for going above and beyond to support patients, and a cadre of some of the UK’s leading consultants is an absolute privilege. I thank them all for their continued dedication to making The Harley Street Clinic the outstanding hospital it is. 

“We welcome opportunities for further improvement and, in line with regulation changes in paediatric intensive care from the Royal College of Nursing , we are adding to the skills mix of our already highly trained nurses. We are ensuring all new recruits in this area are not only highly trained paediatric intensive care specialists but also trained paediatric nurses and, for our already experienced paediatric intensive care nurses, we are offering new advanced training. “

Professor Sir Mike Richards, Chief Inspector of Hospitals at the CQC, said:

“We saw some outstanding areas of care at the Harley Street Clinic. Medical Care leadership promoted an open and approachable culture always driven to provide high quality patient care.

“The management actively encouraged staff to learn and improve. Staff satisfaction surveys showed that staff felt committed to give their best.

“We found an excellent multidisciplinary team (MDT) working with close collaboration between all staff. National experts in their field with access to latest diagnostic and treatment methods attended regular MDT meetings.

“The standard of care was also outstanding. Staff were highly motivated and inspired to offer care that was kind and promoted people’s dignity and were willing to go the extra mile to meet individuals’ needs.  We saw incidences of staff changing their shifts or working additional shifts in order to offer anxious patients continuity of care.”

CQC officials looked across the broad range of services offered at the hospital from the most complex care right through to outpatient and imaging services. Core Services review were medical care; surgery, critical, services for children and young people and outpatients and diagnostic imaging.