CQC ‘needs urgent overhaul’, say MPs
pharmafile | January 9, 2013 | News story | Sales and Marketing | CQQ, Dorrell, NHS, select committee
England’s health and social care regulator, the Care Quality Commission (CQC), must overhaul its governance structures ‘as a matter of urgency’.
That is the view of politicians on the House of Commons health select committee, which published its report on the CQC this morning.
The document warns that the CQC – whose role is to check hospitals and care homes in England to ensure they are up to scratch – has much to do.
Select committee chair Stephen Dorrell insists the CQC must ensure its board sets clear objectives, holds the executive to account against them and regularly assesses its own effectiveness.
The report makes a number of recommendations, including that the CQC makes its inspections ‘challenging’ and ensures they are designed to actually find service shortcomings where they exist.
It goes so far as to recommend that the health secretary should even reconsider whether responsibility for patient safety should stay with the CQC.
Sharing its findings with the public is another area where the CQC is deficient, the report says. It recommends that the CQC ‘should develop clearer guidelines’ for communicating the results of its inspections to patients, care providers, residents and relatives.
The CQC must ensure that concerns it raises are addressed quickly – and that the organisation in turn reports all findings promptly. The CQC “must also show that it treats feedback from the public as free intelligence and acts swiftly when serious complaints are brought to light this way”, Dorrell says.
There is also an issue over consistency of inspections and what they are looking for in the first place – they should be looking at the professional culture within the organisation, he adds.
“In too many cases residential care homes which meet the CQC’s essential standards are regarded as unsatisfactory by carers, relatives and residents,” the report suggests.
A series of recent high profile scandals in which patients have been neglected, mistreated or even abused have dented public confidence in the regulation of care.
The select committee is particularly scathing about the case of whistleblower Kay Sheldon – who is a board member of the CQC.
She approached the Mid Staffordshire public inquiry – which dealt with patient deaths at Stafford Hospital – about her “serious concerns regarding the leadership, management and culture” of the CQC.
Sheldon took what she called this ‘extreme step’ because she felt her concerns about the CQC’s strategy and accountability needed to be raised in public.
“It’s essential that the CQC reforms its culture and working practices to address these shortcomings,” Dorrell – himself a former health secretary – adds.
CQC chief executive David Behan has been quick to defend his organisation. “We have demonstrated through the consultation on the strategy an open and transparent approach,” he insisted.
“We will ensure that openness and transparency are at the heart of the way we develop,” Behan added.
The CQC has accepted the need to improve how it communicates with the public and to work more effectively with care providers. “We have already begun to make some of these changes and will continue this process,” Behan concluded.
“The CQC must use the recommendations made by the health select committee,” urged Mike Farrar, chief executive of the NHS Confederation.
The organisation must also use what comes from its consultation exercise and the recommendations from Francis report, due shortly “to drive through the changes needed to give both the public and NHS leaders confidence in its work”, he concluded.
Adam Hill
Related Content
A community-first future: which pathways will get us there?
In the final Gateway to Local Adoption article of 2025, Visions4Health caught up with Julian …
The Pharma Files: with Dr Ewen Cameron, Chief Executive of West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
Pharmafile chats with Dr Ewen Cameron, Chief Executive of West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, about …
Is this an Oppenheimer moment for the life sciences industry?
By Sabina Syed, Managing Director at Visions4Health In the history of science, few initiatives demonstrate …
