CQC could close GP practices over care failures

14 Aug 14
GP surgeries have been warned that if they are found to be providing poor or unsafe care face they will be shut down under a new ‘two-strikes-and-you're-out’ policy being introduced by the Care Quality Commission.

By Helen Moody | 14 August 2014

GP surgeries have been warned that if they are found to be providing poor or unsafe care face they will be shut down under a new ‘two-strikes-and-you're-out’ policy being introduced by the Care Quality Commission.

The healthcare regulator today announced that the ultimate sanction of shutting down a surgery would be enforced if a practice is not up to scratch.

The threat to close any of England's 8,000 GP practices judged to be giving patients substandard care has been included in the CQC’s proposals to extend its special measures regime for failing hospitals to general practice.

From October, any surgery which the CQC deems to be ‘inadequate’ will be given six months to draw up and implement a improvement plan.

Any that fail to address concerns quickly enough will be put into special measures, and they will be given a further six months to meet the CQC's standards.

If problems are still evident after this the CQC will cancel the practice's registration, meaning it will have to close.

The CQC said that in some cases, when it believed poor care was putting patients at risk or that a practice was not capable of improving on its own, the practice would be put straight into special measures.

Professor Steve Field, the CQC's chief inspector of primary care, said that surgeries providing poor care could not be allowed to continue to give their patients an inadequate service.

‘I want to do all I can to drive up standards in those that are not providing the services people deserve.

‘We need to have a clear framework and a process to respond to those GP practices that are providing inadequate care to ensure that they can't continue to provide inadequate care indefinitely.’

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