Weight loss clinic that secretly filmed patients having treatments deemed 'not safe'
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A weight loss clinic that secretly filmed patients having treatment is "not safe" and has been put in special measures to protect the public. A damning health watchdog report found that Doncaster-based Elements Medical was inadequate in every area it inspected in October. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) report comes as the Mirror fights for better regulation of the industry. Our demands are being backed by The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, who also wants to see change.
Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspectors declared the South Yorkshire clinic was "not safe", "not effective" and "not well led". The clinic, which also operates online as The Virtual Slimming Clinic, offers services including weight management, treatments for skin conditions such as acne, and vitamin injections, the CQC said on Friday.
Among the long list of concerns, the report said: "We saw that people were covertly filmed at the premises including while receiving treatment, without their knowledge or consent. In addition, the provider told us that the closed-circuit television monitoring (CCTV) was monitored and managed by a third-party provider which posed a safeguarding risk.".
The inspectors said they found a large quantity of the muscular injection Dysport in a fridge which was turned off during clinic times because it was noisy. The report said: "Staff told us this medicine had been imported from Turkey, and we found labels on the medicine were not in English, however, the provider did not have a licence to import any medicines to England. Turkey is also not an approved country for the purposes of supplying medicines for use in England by the Medicines Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).