Ritika Janiya
The country’s watchdog for healthcare, the Care Quality Commission, has apologized for problems with its new inspection system. This was on the back of complaints by many hospitals, care homes, dentists, and GPs about the new system, terming it difficult and faulty.
What’s the Problem?
It is responsible for checking on the quality of almost 15,000 care homes, 13,000 homecare agencies, 11,500 dentists, 8,600 GPs and 1,200 hospitals. They make sure these services come up to scratch. As if that wasn’t enough, it has just brought in a whole new way of inspecting these services and a new computer system to help manage the process. Not everything went smoothly.
Many care providers believed that this new method of inspection was very strict and not at all fair. They reported many teething problems with the new computer system, which was introduced to help them. Thus, much frustration and confusion were caused.
Why Did They Apologize?
The apology was made by Kate Terroni, the acting chief executive of the CQC, after her predecessor Ian Trenholm departed last month. He resigned halfway through implementing these reforms, leaving many of the problems still to be dealt with.
Kate Terroni admitted that the CQC made mistakes with the new system. “I want to start with an apology. We’ve got things wrong in the implementation of our new regulatory approach. I know that the changes we’ve delivered so far are not what we promised. It’s made things more difficult than they should be.”
Problems with the New System
One major issue was the new online “provider portal” that was announced. The system was meant to make it easy for the care providers to upload all the important information without much hassle. Delays beat many providers, who were not able to use the system properly. It rendered the whole inspection process harder and stressful.
Indeed, some providers compared the CQC inspectors to Ofsted, schools’ watchdog. It was an equally difficult and useless visit for them. There has also been a case when another headteacher, Ruth Perry, took her own life while under stressful inspection, which also raised concerns over the CQC’s approach.
What Are People Saying?
According to Nadra Ahmed, chair of the National Care Association, methods adopted by CQC for inspection were not working well and are causing problems for care providers. She said the new online system was failing—and providers had to spend a lot of time trying to put it right.
Ahmed said the group welcomed the CQC apology but hundreds of staff were left in tears and extremely upset during and following the stressful inspection process. “For some time now, the CQC has not been responsive to the challenges that the sector has faced because of poor inspection methodology”, said Ahmed.
What’s Next?
The government has ordered an independent review into how effective the CQC is, which the agency said would be led by Dr Penny Dash. She aims to determine where things are wrong and how they can be changed as appropriate.
Kate Terroni has promised urgent changes to fix problems in the new system. She said: “With my new role comes my personal commitment to urgently and rapidly improve how we’re using our regulatory approach and to making the changes we need to steer us in the right direction.”
Care providers are still holding out in the hope that there will be a system which provides a more supportive and consistent inspection process that will truly help them to improve their care.
Care Quality Commission in England Apologizes The new inspection system generated criticism and hundreds of complaints from many care providers who found it extremely difficult and not helpful. Interim chief Kate Terroni has admitted that the CQC did wrong and vowed to improve things fast. The government is reviewing the effectiveness of the commission to adopt better solutions.
