Its consultation, A new start, launched today, is part of the response to the public inquiry into care failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. It paves the way for longer and more thorough inspections of hospitals, led by expert inspectors rather than generalists. The new-model inspections are due to start in October this year.
The consultation also proposes a single rating for each hospital of ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’. Those rated ‘outstanding’ rating would be reviewed every three to five years, while ‘inadequate’ hospitals would be inspected as often as required.
The proposals would also make it easier for the CQC to prosecute providers that breach fundamental care standards. If the watchdog found that the quality of care at an NHS hospital required significant improvement it would set a timetable for recovery, referring trusts to Monitor or the Trust Development Authority to take enforcement action as required.
Launching the consultation, CQC chief executive David Behan said: ‘This consultation is a critical step towards making root and branch changes to regulation.
‘These proposals put CQC firmly on the side of people who use services. We have been listening to what people have said is important to them about services and used this to form these proposals, but there is a huge amount of detail to decide on before we can move to the next state.’
CQC chair David Prior added that the changes in the consultation marked a break with the past.
‘We have not been looking at the right things when we have inspected hospitals and we have not had the right level of clinical expertise to get under the skin of organisations,’ he said.
‘These proposals firmly put patients at the heart of what we do. It should mean that when someone goes into hospital they have confidence that the hospital is getting the basic aspects of care tight – the kind of care we all have a right to expect. These standards were not met at Stafford hospital.’
NHS Confederation chief executive Mike Farrar said the health service should do more to provide easy-to-understand and meaningful information on the quality of local services. But he added: ‘It is essential that the ratings system developed by the CQC fully recognises the complexity of NHS organisations and reflects what patients need to know about their care.’
The consultation will close on August 12. Consultations on inspections of social care and general practice will be issued later in the year.
