The independent regulator of health
and social care in England

CQC Update

01 November 2021

A regular update for providers and professionals working in healthcare services

An update to Patient FIRST

Patient FIRST, our online resource developed to support those working in urgent and emergency care, has been updated.

The resource was created in partnership with frontline urgent and emergency care clinicians and has now been updated to reflect insight gathered at two workshops held earlier this year. These workshops provided an opportunity for attendees to share learning from their experiences of using Patient FIRST in practice. Discussions also focused on effective trust and system wide responses to the current challenges. The update includes extra examples of good practice and data sets that services can use to help identify risk and areas for improvement.

Over the winter we will maintain a risk based and proportionate approach and remain sensitive to the context in which services are operating. We will continue to use data and intelligence to identify where we may need to follow up or carry out an on-site inspection.

Our teams will focus on urgent and emergency care services provided within a local area. This may mean we inspect more than one provider or location within a system to understand how services are working together to deliver safe, effective and high-quality care.

We will continue to work closely with frontline emergency department care staff to share what is working well and explore how system wide collaboration can help respond to the challenges these services face.

Read the news story and view the update to Patient FIRST.

State of Care 2020/21

Our annual assessment of the state of health and social care in England looks at the quality of care over the past year. 

This year's State of Care reflects on how the system has dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic by working collaboratively and the impact on people who use care services. The report highlights key areas affecting the system as a whole across four common themes.

For the first time our report is not in sector specific chapters, but looks at the system as a whole.

Our annual survey of providers launches in December

We will be sending an online survey to all providers to learn about their views and experiences of CQC and help monitor the successful delivery of our strategy.

This is our fourth Annual Provider Survey. The survey is voluntary and anonymous and is sent to all providers.

From the 3rd December we send emails containing a link to the survey to each provider inviting them to complete and submit the survey. The survey will run for three weeks.

We ask providers to complete one survey for the location or provider where they are the registered manager or nominated individual. The survey gives CQC really useful feedback, so we encourage providers to complete it, issuing reminders during the three week window the survey is available.

If you have any questions about the survey please email: ProviderSurvey@cqc.org.uk

Become a Specialist Advisor for Mental Health Services and Community Health Services

We are looking to recruit to our team of Specialist Advisors with expertise in Mental Health and Community Health Services. This role is ad hoc and can run alongside your current job and offers successful candidates the opportunity to visit and learn from other services across the country.

The CQC’s approach to regulation is to always inspect healthcare services with professionally skilled Specialist Advisors who have experience of working in that type of service as an essential member of the inspection team. Specialist Advisors provide specialist advice and knowledge and support the CQC’s inspection activity. This advice ensures that our judgements are informed by up to date and credible clinical and professional knowledge and experience.

We are looking for specialist in specific health services. Please view the job advert for more information.

Hospice registration project update

Over the past few months we have been conducting a project offering hospice providers the opportunity of dedicated support to review their entry on the CQC register to ensure that it is accurate and reflects the service they are delivering.  

The project has now come to an end and the dedicated email address is now closed.

Thank you to all those providers that have engaged with us.

If you have made changes your registration please remember to send us an updated statement of purpose to HSCA_notifications@cqc.org.uk.

For those who did not use this opportunity we would still encourage you to check your entry on the register. This information is used to calculate fees, so it’s important that it’s right. If you need to make changes, you can find more information on our website, or speak to your relationship owner.  

Please remember it is a provider’s responsibility to ensure their registration information held with CQC is correct.

Adult inpatient survey 2020

The results of our annual adults inpatient survey published this month. This survey looks at the experiences of people who stayed at last one night in hospital as an inpatient. 

Most people were positive about their overall hospital experience and felt they were treated with dignity and respect, as well as reporting having positive interactions with doctors and nurses. However, information provision at discharge and follow-up care are areas in need of improvement, and people who were considered frail consistently reported poorer than average experiences.

For more information read the full results.

Other news

• Medicines safety week

The first week of November marks the annual #MedSafetyWeek. This year the focus will be on vaccines and reporting side effects.

Remember to discuss with colleagues and patients the importance of reporting suspected adverse drug reactions to the Yellow Card scheme. The MHRA launched its public health campaign to inform those receiving Covid-19 vaccines about how to report a suspected side effect to the MHRA's Yellow Card scheme on the Coronavirus Yellow Card reporting website.

The campaign aims to ensure those looking to report any vaccine side effect know where to go and what to do. Anyone can report to the Yellow Card scheme, whether for themselves or on someone else’s behalf. Find out more.

• One Year On

The 7^th of October marked the start of One Year On from when the NHS became the world’s first health service to commit to reaching net zero carbon emissions. The Greener NHS & NHS Improvement are raising awareness – read the blog and watch a video message from Greener NHS Chief Sustainability Officer Dr Nick Watts.

CQC, as part of the NHS Net Zero Group, has made three commitments to being a more sustainable organisation: 

CQC will incorporate environmental sustainability assessment in its new regulatory model, to support providers in identifying opportunities to set net zero targets and to aid them in realising them.

CQC will model good environmental sustainability practice, identifying areas of business operation where net zero targets can be set and achieved.

CQC will work with partner organisations across England’s health and care system to identify good practice in the provision of environmentally sustainable health and care services and use its role as the system regulator to promote and encourage their uptake across providers.

• 18 new national reports from the GIRFT programme

The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme – the national NHS programme designed to improve the treatment and care of patients through in-depth service reviews – has recently published 18 new national reports covering a broad spectrum of surgical and medical specialties.

You can read and download the reports all GIRFT national reports here, even if you do not have an NHS email address. You will need to register for access to this site, but permission is granted quickly.

• On 26 October we wrote to mental health providers to update on our interim methodology for Mental Health Act Second Opinion Appointed Doctors (SOADs). We are currently preparing for the return to SOAD site visiting, where all parties agree that this is safe, feasible and the most appropriate option for patients. Read the letter for more information.
• In a free webinar series this November we hear from people with lived experience, BASW England, Skills for Care, CQC and NICE on how to support health and social care providers to enable adults with learning disabilities and/or autistic adults to live good lives along the 'homes not hospitals' pathway. Find out more and register.
• In case you missed our Sexual Safety in Ambulances webinar in September, we have uploaded recordings of the session to our Youtube page. If you would like to request a copy of the slides or Q&A please contact HospitalsDelivery@cqc.org.uk.

• IR(ME)R annual report: Our annual report looks at our work under the Ionising Radiation (Medical Exposure) Regulations 2017. This year's report will published on 4 November 2021 and will be published on our website. 

•  An NHS letter is available in over 20 languages to explain to people without an NHS Number how to get the COVID-19 vaccine. It reassures people in this situation they do not need to have a GP or an NHS number and that COVID-19 vaccines are available to every adult living in the UK, free of charge without any immigration checks. You can find this letter on the GOV.UK website.