The CQC inspections: what they mean for general practice.

Abstract

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator for Health and Social Care providers in England. CQC started to inspect general practice in April 2013 using a compliance focused model. Between April 2014 and September 2014, CQC piloted a new inspection methodology for general practice. As of late November 2014, over 500 GP practices have been inspected with this new methodology, which was rolled out nationally from 1 October 2014. The new inspection regime reflects a significant culture change in the CQC. We have moved away from a regulation-focused approach, to a more holistic assessment of the quality of care by asking five key questions: Our inspection teams are also different; comprising an expert inspector and a GP specialist advisor. In addition, practice nurses, practice managers, and ‘experts by experience’ (members of the public who have had substantial experience of using services) may also be part of the team, making an inspection more of a peer-review process than before. In keeping with our commitment to transparency about our regulatory approach, we published our GP ‘intelligent monitoring’ (IM) risk bandings in November 2014.2 IM is a tool we use to prioritise which practices to inspect and is information we have already been publishing about the acute sector for over a year. We acknowledge that the decision to make this data publicly available caused some controversy within the profession. We publish the results of our IM to promote greater transparency and better understanding of our work. IM is not our judgement on the quality of care. Our inspection visits are central to the way we make judgements, informed by local intelligence, the views of other …