The Care Quality Commission has just over four months to complete more than half of its annual inspections, it may have to inform the Department of Health it will not meet the target.
Latest figures for 2 November show inspectors have completed 12,292 inspections since April 2012 against a full year target of 31,985. It is believed that the CQC will miss the target by almost 10,000 inspections. However, £4.5m is to be invested in overtime and bank inspectors in a bid to complete the required number of inspections.
The CQC currently has 833 inspectors in post, but should have 955. There have been government restrictions on recruitment spending meaning that the healthcare regulator has a £5m underspend on staff costs.
As part of its improvement plan for 2012-13, the CQC agreed with the Department of Health, that it would inspect at least one service at every NHS provider and every adult social care provider a year. This move to annual inspections followed criticism of the CQC by the health select committee that it was carrying out too few inspections.
Chief executive David Behan said activity levels appeared to be improving and he would come back to the board in December with a view on whether the target could be met. He said: “The approach we need to take is to act as a coherent organisation that’s supporting it’s frontline to do what we ask them to do… I’m not going to give a commitment we’ll discharge our programme as set out of the beginning of the year.”
(Source: Health Service Journal, November 2012)
(Image: Medill, Flickr)
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