6th March: The CQC hosts a Q&A Session on Their New Strategy

The consultation on the CQC strategy for 2013 to 2016 closed on 6 December 2012. 

Some of the key themes that have emerged are: 

• Broad support of CQC’s purpose and strategic priorities.
• Almost universal support for differentiated regulation, but with caveats about how this is achieved.
• Overwhelming support for building better relationships with the public, with many suggestions on how to do this.
• All audiences favour CQC building credibility with providers, with consistency of inspection and an appropriately skilled CQC workforce being essential to its success.
• General support for strengthening CQC’s work in mental health and mental capacity by building on existing work.
• Support for CQC measuring its impact and publishing results.
• Continuing dissatisfaction with the current complaints system.
• Some differences in opinion over CQC’s role in improvement; frequency of inspections; and our role as an information provider.

The CQC are now in the next phase of developing proposals, and some early thinking that the CQC will work with you to develop include:

Firstly, the regulatory approach will change to ensure the CQC assess the leadership, culture and governance of acute services in the NHS and the corporate governance of large providers of adult social care services. 

The CQC will ensure that there is an environment where professional standards are high, and a corporate culture that is people-centred, open and encourages people to speak out. More professional experts will be used in the inspection teams and they will involve more members of the public with direct experience of care.

Secondly, the new approach will ensure the CQC work more closely with other parts of the health and social care system and use a wider range of information and evidence to enable us to make a broader assessment of the quality and performance of those we regulate.  

Assessment of care quality will focus on safety, effectiveness, and personal experience. The CQC will also make their own governance more robust by strengthening the membership of the Board to include a mix of new non-executive Directors and Executive Directors. 

As the CQC develop their approach, they want to continue the valuable discussions that have been taking place with you, over the past year. On Wednesday 6 March between 13:00 and 14:00, David Behan would like to invite you to join him in a live Q&A session on the online community for providers. The purpose of this session is to discuss the initial findings from the strategy review consultation, and to answer any questions you may have on this so far.

Any relevant comments or feedback from this discussion will be considered during the development of the revised strategy which will be published with the supporting documents in the spring.

If you would like help with your CQC registration, visit us at Words Worth Reading Ltd. 

Image by Taqi, Flickr