Grimsby eye clinic gets Outstanding rating for leadership from the Care Quality Commission

Newmedica Lincolnshire, based in Grimsby, has been rated Outstanding for being well led including its organisational culture, governance, learning and leadership, culture and values in its first inspection by the Care Quality Commission.

And the health and social care regulator also rated services at the Cromwell Road clinic as Good across the board, recognising the high quality service that it offers to patients.

The inspection team found that the clinic was well staffed, and that staff were well trained and managed safety well. Patients were treated with compassion, and were able to access treatment without a long wait.

There were high levels of staff satisfaction. The team were proud to work there – and spoke highly of the culture. The leadership team engaged well with staff and patients, and innovative approaches were used to gather feedback to drive continuous service improvement. The clinic was found to be well run and well led.

The clinic, which operates out of Cromwell Primary Care Centre, offers rapid access to treatment for a number of eye conditions for patients referred by the NHS – and primary care providers like GPs and opticians can refer their patients to Newmedica Lincolnshire quickly and easily. The clinic is also open to private patients.

All patients are typically seen within two weeks of their referral to the clinic, and their treatment is typically carried out within four weeks of that initial appointment.

Newmedica Lincolnshire offers cataract surgery and outpatient services, ocular hypertension and glaucoma monitoring, oculoplastic surgery, medical retina clinics, general ophthalmology services and YAG, a specialist laser treatment used to improve your vision after cataract surgery.

The clinic is led by consultant ophthalmologists Owen Stewart, Bataung Mokete and Bernie Chang, alongside operational director, Helen Labrom.

Helen said: ‘We are delighted to have received such a great rating from the Care Quality Commission at our first inspection. We have seen a lot of growth over the past year, so to have our achievements recognised in this way is the icing on the cake, and I have to pay tribute to the efforts made by our clinical operations manager, Wendy Collins, and our brilliant staff team in getting us to this point.

‘We have a strong clinical team here with many years of experience, and we were delighted that the strength of the leadership we provide to our wider team was especially recognised with an Outstanding rating. But we will not stop striving to make our service even better for our patients.

‘We pride ourselves on being able to offer safe and effective treatments in a fraction of the time that patients may end up waiting elsewhere, giving them a quick and easy service which allows them to get back to normal much more quickly.

‘If patients want to be referred to us on the NHS, they need to speak to their primary care practitioner. If you are the one doing the referring, give us a call and we will talk you through it. Give us a call today, as we would love to support you to support your patients.’

Newmedica is one of the leading independent sector providers of NHS funded ophthalmology services in England. They have a proven track record of working with the NHS, providing services for NHS CCGs, NHS Trusts and Foundation Trusts, and other providers of NHS funded services.

Currently, they provide services for 22 NHS contracts, and deliver over 120,000 patient interactions annually in 28 locations across England. According to a recent patient survey (2018/19) 98% of patients are likely to recommend Newmedica to their friends and family.