By David Williams
The chair of the new Care Quality Commission has promised the health and social care watchdog will be a ‘modern regulator’, conscious of the burden that regulation can place on providers.
The chair of the new Care Quality Commission has promised the health and social care watchdog will be a ‘modern regulator’, conscious of the burden that regulation can place on providers.Baroness Young, who heads the commission, outlined her approach while giving evidence at a Commons’ health select committee hearing on patient safety on March 5.
The CQC will take over from the Healthcare Commission, the Commission for Social Care Inspection and the Mental Health Act Commission next month. Young told MPs that the centrepiece of the CQC’s work on patient safety will be drawing up a risk profile for each care provider.
‘We have made a commitment to be a modern regulator,’ she said. ‘For me, that’s risk-based, proportionate, working with providers on important issues and also with a strong focus on looking at the administrative burden.’
The CQC would assess whether gathering information was ‘truly justifiable’ before asking providers to supply it, she added.
Sir Ian Kennedy, chair of the Healthcare Commission, made the case for increased regulation. He told the hearing that both public and health trusts agreed it increased patient safety.
Asked about the cost of regulation, he said: ‘What is the cost to safety if we don’t have regulation? There are other sectors in public life in which regulation has been cut back. We know the cost of that because we’re living with it. The costs must be set against the benefits.’
He added: ‘Regulation is valuable to government. It has to be efficient and effective in so far as promoting improvement. We have done that.’
Kennedy said trusts should be using patient surveys and internal monitoring to spot problems rather than reacting after a crisis had occurred.
‘Things will always be going wrong somewhere. The future is not in investigations, the future is surveillance. We should be in the business of preventing Baby P – preventing things before you get to the point of a tragedy.’
