Since March 2012, CQC has faced heavy criticisms surrounding its ability to regulate health and social care. However, a recent report published by the National Audit Office has emphasised CQC’s ‘substantial progress,’ in embedding changes to its inspection approach following the execution of a three-year transformation program.
CQC’s response
Inevitably, CQC has welcomed NAO’s encouraging report. However, CQC has also recognised that the new inspection model is ‘still maturing’ to meet the expectation that it is intended to be delivered in a way which provides benefits to all providers, and service-users across the country.
David Behan, Chief Executive of CQC said: ‘”I am greatly encouraged that the NAO has recognised the substantial progress that CQC has made in developing, testing and rolling out our new inspection model, which has people at its heart and which delivers a deep insight into the quality and safety care that they are receiving.’
‘We know we are not at the end of this journey and that there is more to be done. In particular, recruiting, training and supporting our staff is a key priority of ours, as is a complete overhaul to our registration process for providers to improve its efficiency and overall experience.’
Recommendations:
Although the report has recognised CQC’s developments there is still vast room for improvement as highlighted in NAO’s advisements following on from the report.
These include:
1.CQC should review how useful it’s intelligent monitoring information really is, as there was limited evidence to suggest it was helping CQC learn anything more after completion of the first inspection cycle.
2. Better use should be made of service user information as part of the intelligent monitoring data, as current partnerships and website comments coding is not providing a sufficient amount of intelligence for it to act on.
3.CQC should develop and reinforce both formal and informal mechanisms for sharing knowledge between inspectors across its three directorates.
4. CQC should evaluate the effectiveness of its board every year, as no review of the committee structure had been carried out in the three years prior to 2015.
Thus, despite the many strengths of this new regulatory model the delivery of improvements will have to remain a central priority for CQC, as work is still required to manage public expectations and develop the accuracy of its staffing model.
The full report can be viewed at the following link:
http://www.nao.org.uk/report/capacity-and-capability-to-regulate-the-qua…
