Help Shape CQC Regulation for Health and Social Care

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is consulting on a new set of proposals which will help shape the next phase of regulation for health and social care across the country.

For the next eight weeks anyone with an interest is encouraged to have their say.

The proposals include:

• Changes to the regulation of primary medical services and adult social care services, including the frequency and intensity of its inspections and how the CQC monitors providers and gathers its intelligence.
• Aligning the way the CQC monitors, inspects and rates primary medical services and adult social care services with a new way of collecting data to ensure a better view of quality, allowing longer intervals between inspections for services rated as good and outstanding, and the abolition of the current limit that prevents the CQC from amending ratings following inspection if the last rating was awarded less than six months previously.
• Increasing the CQC's focus on how to encourage adult social care services that are repeatedly rated as requires improvement to get to the expected standard of quality.
• Improvements to the structure of registration and the CQC’s definition of ‘registered providers’.
• How the CQC will monitor, inspect and rate new models of care and large or complex providers.
• Changes to how providers should engage in the ‘fit and proper persons’ requirement for directors and the information CQC will be expecting from them.
• Changes to how registration will record services that providers are registered to deliver and provider-level assessment for all health and care sectors to help encourage improvement.

Commenting on the proposals, David Behan, Chief Executive at the CQC, said: “As providers respond to the rapidly changing health and care landscape by exploring new models of care, we are consulting on how we will regulate these to ensure that we encourage improvement, collaboration and innovation while ensuring that people get good, safe care.

“This is the second in a series of three consultations aimed at simplifying and strengthening the way we regulate. Today we are proposing changes to how we regulate adult social care and primary medical services; changes which will help us to use information more effectively so we can target our inspections in services where there is greatest risk to the quality and safety of care. We will continue to report on quality in an open and transparent way to help services to improve and also to help people make decisions about their care.

“I hope as many people as possible will take the time to read our proposals and tell us what they think.”

The closing date for all comments is Tuesday 8 August. The CQC expects to formally respond to the feedback from the consultation later in the year.