Abstract
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand how inspection team members work together to conduct surveys of hospitals, the challenges teams may face and how these might be addressed.Design/methodology/approachData were gathered through an evaluation of a new regulatory model for acute hospitals in England, implemented by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) during 2013-2014. The authors interviewed key stakeholders, observed inspections and surveyed and interviewed inspection team members and hospital staff. Common characteristics of temporary teams provided an analytical framework.FindingsThe temporary nature of the inspection teams hindered the conduct of some inspection activities, despite the presence of organisational citizenship behaviours. In a minority of sub-teams, there were tensions between CQC employed inspectors, healthcare professionals, lay people and CQC data analysts. Membership changes were infrequent and did not appear to inhibit team functioning, with members displaying high commitment. Although there were leadership authority ambiguities, these were not problematic. Existing processes of recruitment and selection, training and preparation and to some extent leadership, did not particularly lend themselves to addressing the challenges arising from the temporary nature of the teams.Research limitations/implicationsConducting the research during the piloting of the new regulatory approach may have accentuated some challenges. There is scope for further research on inspection team leadership.Practical implicationsIssues may arise if inspection and accreditation agencies deploy temporary, heterogeneous survey teams.Originality/valueThis research is the first to illuminate the functioning of inspection survey teams by applying a temporary teams perspective.
Highlights
Accreditation agencies and national inspectorates commonly assess the performance of large, complex organisations such as hospitals through on-site inspection surveys conducted by teams of surveyors (Bohigas and Heaton, 2000)
We found that the temporary nature of Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection teams hindered the conduct of some inspection activities, despite the presence of Organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB)
Heterogeneity of members Heterogeneity of inspection team members is intrinsic to the CQC model, and our findings suggest that while this did produce benefits, there was a need for greater appreciation of the value that different groups could bring to the inspection, to define their roles more clearly and to have more realistic expectations of what each could deliver
Summary
Accreditation agencies and national inspectorates commonly assess the performance of large, complex organisations such as hospitals through on-site inspection surveys conducted by teams of surveyors (Bohigas and Heaton, 2000). © Alan Boyd, Shilpa Ross, Ruth Robertson, Kieran Walshe and Rachael Smithson. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution. Journal of Health Organization and (CC BY 4.0) licence. Distribute, translate and create derivative works of this. Management article (for both commercial & non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/
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