CQC has published its first 10 inspection reports from the new GP out-of-hours inspections.The inspections have involved more clinicians on inspection teams than in the past. Inspection teams were made up of the following people:
· GPs.
· Nurses.
· Practice managers.
· Other clinicians.
· Trained members of the public.
The inspections carried out by CQC were announced inspections. Various approaches were tested to gather the views of local people, including listing events and working with organisations such as local Healthwatch in order to help gather local people’s views of out-of-hours services.
Chief Inspector of General Practice, Professor Steve Field said, “these inspections mark the first phases in the changes that we are making to inspections of primary medical services, the results of these first inspections show that some services are serving their communities well but others still have some work to do. We’ll take what we have learned from these first inspections to help us develop and improve the process; they have been particularly helpful in shaping our thinking on ratings, which we will start to give to out and in hours GP services from October this year. We will also publish a full report on all out-of-hours inspections undertaken in this first wave of inspections later in the summer.”
