Update from the Care Quality Commission
In 2013 the Care Quality Commission (CQC) set out its new purpose to make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and to encourage care services to improve. To make sure they focus on this, they proposed wide-ranging changes to how we regulate and inspect services.
After extensive consultation over the past year, the CQC are now announcing a new way of regulating and inspecting care homes, community adult social care, GPs and Out-of-hours services in England. There are many changes, but one of the most significant is that they will now rate services to help people compare and choose services, highlighting where care is outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.
The CQC’s three Chief Inspectors have produced a short video to introduce these changes, which can be viewed at www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoL7pxjmGAk&feature=youtu.be.
The CQC would like to thank everyone who helped to develop their new approach as part of our advisory groups and through our consultation earlier this year. During the consultation the CQC asked a number of key questions:
- How should the CQC seek out and listen to the experiences of the public, including patients and their relatives, friends or carers?
- Are the CQC inspecting the right services?
- Are the questions the CQC will ask on inspections the right ones?
- How does the CQC make sure that their ratings are consistent?
The CQC listened to feedback on all of these points and their consultation response sets out what they did as a result. To read the full consultation response visit www.cqc.org.uk/content/consultation-response-how-we-regulate-inspect-and-rate-services.
The CQC have also published new handbooks for providers setting out our new approach to regulation and inspection in detail and these are now available on their website:
- GP and Out-of-Hours - www.cqc.org.uk/content/gp-practices-and-out-hours-services
- Adult social care - www.cqc.org.uk/content/adult-social-care
- Hospitals - www.cqc.org.uk/content/hospitals-0
These handbooks include the CQC’s view of what good and outstanding care looks like. They will be publishing information about this which is aimed at the public over the coming months. The CQC will also be publishing their final guidance for inspecting hospice services later this month.
Finally, the CQC are also continuing to host discussions and reviews about the way they work on their online community for the public. If you are not already a member and would like to register visit www.cqc.org.uk/content/join-our-public-online-community.