12th February 2025
Blog from our Board Member, Mr Geoffrey Cox
Sir Julian Hartley, took over as CEO of CQC in December, and said the regulator has 'lost its way' in regards to safety ratings for NHS hospitals, care homes and other facilities.
The IT system (costing circa £90m) resulted in reports and information being lost, a backlog of 5,000 safety alerts and a loss of expert inspectors to explain why most inspection reports average around four years old.
CQC's 2,500 inspections last year, compares to 15,800 visits to care homes, hospitals and GP practices in 2019.
The Health Secretary Mr Wes Streeting said some of the ratings had been 'effectively manufactured and invented using partial views and inspections combined with historic ratings and judgments'.
Mr Streeting also said there were 'people (Inspectors) going into hospitals with no experience of actually providing care in hospital'.
The independent review by Dr Penny Dash found fewer than half the number of inspections were carried out last year as in 2019/20. Also, those conducting inspections also had a worrying lack of experience.
Mr Streeting asked CQC urgently to put in place transparency around ratings so that people can see how those ratings were put together and then make a judgment about whether it's a true and fair and an accurate reflection of the quality of care - we are still waiting!
He said: 'I never expected to be told that one in five health and care providers had not received a rating, that some health and care providers have not been inspected for a decade, that some of those ratings are effectively manufactured and invented using partial views and inspections combined with historic ratings and judgments and said he was 'absolutely appalled'. (Let alone the flawed IT driven assessments).
Indeed, but the truth also is that 1,262 of 2,531 hospitals do not have a rating at all. That's a staggering 50%. 1,670 of 14,762 care homes don't also, but that's only 11% and if/when a care service change hands (as they do), or re structure, the rating is dropped for that reason too. 5,919 home care agencies of 15,427 aren't rated either, and that's 38%, hospitals however don't change hands.
We need urgent clarification that the Health and Care Act regulations are being applied consistently across health and social care. However, anecdotal evidence would suggest this is far from the case and the above statistics would also suggest otherwise, as well as Inspections being halted at NHS ICS's. Ongoing questions being asked repeatedly.
