Care Quality Commission inquiry
Closed
What the inquiry looked at
“The Care Quality Commission is the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England. Its purpose is to "make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high quality care, and to encourage them to improve". It was formed in 2009 from the merger of three previous regulators. The Committee looked at the Commission in 2012, reporting serious concerns about its governance, leadership and culture, and a failure to intervene quickly or strongly enough in failing providers. Shortly after, the Commission was further criticised by the Francis Report. The Commission responded by making substantial changes to its structure and leadership, and by developing a new regulatory model that strengthens the way it expects to monitor and inspect hospitals, adult care providers and GPs. Progress has been made in recruiting new staff, but there are not yet enough people to carry out all the Commission’s work. Department places additional expectations The Department of Health has placed additional expectations on the Commission that increase risk to achieving its transformation strategy. From April 2015, the Department gave it responsibility for overseeing the financial sustainability of the largest adult social care providers, which it began before having in-house expertise fully in place. The Department announced in June 2015 that the Commission would also assess the financial efficiency of hospital trusts. This inquiry assesses the substantial progress the Care Quality Commission has made in implementing the changes in its transformation strategy and how it is responding to its new responsibilities. It also scrutinises the Commission’s access to data and how it can improve indicators of its own performance.”
The committee's words, from the inquiry page on parliament.uk ↗.
What it found
The Care Quality Commission has made substantial progress since the Committee last reported in 2012. But it is behind where it should be, six years after it was established, in that it is not yet an effective regulator of health and social care. Because of staff shortages it is not meeting the trajectory it set itself for completing inspections of hospitals, adult social care and primary care. There are also concerns about the consistency and accuracy of draft inspection reports, and the time the Commission takes to finalise a report after carrying out an inspection. At the same time, the Commission is not yet ready to implement new responsibilities it takes on in April 2016 to assess the efficiency with which hospitals use their resources. In addition, the Commission does not yet have the quantified performance measures, linked to explicit targets, that are needed to show whether it is satisfactorily performing its statutory duties. We will be returning to this subject to review what further progress the Commission makes in the coming year.
What the government said
No government response is linked to this report.
How the inquiry ran
Each dot is a dated item listed on this page, from the inquiry's opening on 15 October 2015 to 20 July 2016.
- Oral evidence 28 Oct 2015
- Report 11 Dec 2015
- Correspondence 2 letters
What it recommended
The committee's recommendations are not listed here yet. Read them in 12th Report - Care Quality Commission ↗ on parliament.uk.
Evidence
Oral evidence sessions 1
- 28 Oct 2015No witnesses recordedparliament.uk ↗