Health Services: Events Industry
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 13 June 2022 to Question 13229 on Emergency Services and First Aid, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of concerns about the safety of people using medical services at temporary events raised in the letter of the Care Quality Commission's Deputy Chief Inspector of Hospitals to the chief executive officers of local authorities in England in her role as National Lead for Ambulance S...
Government answer
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) regulates the independent ambulance sector with exemptions, where some activities fall outside of its scope. This includes transport and treatment services provided solely within the confines of an event site. However, there are a small number of providers which are regulated where no such exemption exists, primarily those which also offer diagnostic and screening procedures. This activity is therefore regulated.
While it does not have regulatory oversight of such providers, the CQC has evidence of patient safety and quality issues and wrote to the sector in March 2017 and November 2018 and stated these concerns in its ‘State of care in independent ambulance services’ report in March 2019. The CQC’s then Chief Inspector of Hospitals also raised similar concerns to the Manchester Arena Inquiry in January 2022.
To bring medical services provided at events into the CQC’s scope of regulation requires an amendment in the Regulated Activity of the Treatment of Disease, Disorder and Injury. The Department is currently undertaking a post implementation review to ascertain whether the current Regulated Activities achieved the intended policy objective. Once the post implementation review report has been completed, the Department will work with the CQC on how the Regulated Activity can be updated as part of a review of the CQC’s regulations.