Improvements listed on 14 November were as follows.
Leadership
CQC’s new Chief Executive, Sir Julian Hartley, starts on 2 December. The regulator will soon be starting recruitment for 4 permanent Chief Inspectors.
Assessment
CQC will be working to align assessment teams under the Chief Inspectors and around areas of sector expertise. It has invested £2 million to support resourcing the assessment workforce and increase inspection activity and is piloting approaches to ensure assessments are led by people with sector specific expertise.
CQC is reviewing the assessment framework and:
• discontinuing scoring at evidence category level
• discontinuing the use of previous ratings to produce scores
• reviewing how it uses quality statements for each assessment
• reviewing how it uses professional judgement when producing a final rating.
CQC is also working with Professor Sir Mike Richards and the Care Provider Alliance to provide recommendations on the future of regulatory assessment.
Relationship management
CQC is piloting approaches to improve relationship management across all sectors and will evaluate these in early 2025.
Improved tools for providers
CQC is working to identify improvements for the provider portal and introducing improved customer support. The registration functionality has been removed: More information.
CQC is co-designing a clear and accessible provider handbook.
Inspection reports
CQC is experiencing technical issues, resulting in delays to uploading inspection reports and sharing draft reports with providers to check factual accuracy. CQC apologise and are working to fix this. In the meantime, reports are being uploaded manually. The regulator's operations team will inform providers when their report is going to be published.
Engagement
There is more about CQC’s engagement on assessments and ratings in a blog from Director of Engagement, Chris Day and recordings of engagement sessions on its work developing new ratings characteristics under the four ratings: outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate:
• Recording of an engagement session held on 23 October
• Recording of an engagement section held on 5 November
Further engagement opportunities will be added to CQC's new webpage.
