Failures at Leicester circumcision clinic after private patient photos shared

A baby circumcision clinic in Leicester failed to adequately protect sensitive images of patients and adequately check staff criminal records, inspectors have said.

The Baby Circumcision Clinic at Eastgate House, on Humberstone Road in Leicester, has been labelled as 'requires improvement' by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), after a number of issues were highlighted in an inspection and the services has pledged to make improvements following the report.

The service, which provides circumcision to newborn and infant male children up to the age of 18 months, holds clinics once every other Sunday where usually around 15 patients are seen for circumcision procedures.

Circumcision is also a common practice in Jewish, Islamic and African communities, who conduct circumcisions for non-medical reasons.

During the service's first inspection by the CQC, a number of issues were highlighted linking to the lack of clear systems implemented to "keep people safe and safeguarded from abuse".

The report said: "We were informed that when patients were anxious, they could be sent images of other children's anonymised post procedure results (with parental consent provided by a messaging app) for reassurance."

Flaws in the service's Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks were also noted by inspectors.

The service's standards of cleanliness and hygiene were also criticised by inspectors, who said that 'some systems were in place to manage infection prevention and control'.

Despite the criticisms made by the CQC, the service was commended in other areas of the inspection and rated as 'good' in several parts.

The CQC also reported that the clinic had not had a single complaint since the service was registered in July 2021 and it did well in respecting the privacy and dignity of patients.

Dr Muhammad Sahi, a paediatric specialist and lead clinician at the service told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the comments made by the CQC were 'reasonable' and they are looking to improve the service immediately.

"All the gaps which were highlighted we will act on and we fully accept what the report says and we have been in contact with the CQC inspector, who was really helpful, who said he appreciated our efforts and we are looking to improve. We can fix these issues with ease and will do so before we are inspected again within a year's time.

"There are a few things we were simply not aware of, but we will act on them, but we are glad there are not huge major problems with the service itself. "