18.05.16
CQC admits potential risk of failing to complete inspection programme
Health sector changes could make it impossible for the CQC to achieve its goal of comprehensively inspecting health and social care services, the inspection body has admitted.
A paper published ahead of the CQC’s board meeting today set out a number of strategic and operational risks to the CQC in the next year.
It says that the risk of “a change of external environment in health and social care or more widely” affecting the CQC could potentially be ‘high’ and it has ‘low’ confidence in its ability to manage such a change.
However, because of mitigating measures put in place it rates the overall risk as 'medium'.
This could include other bodies and regulators undermining the CQC’s purpose, potentially including NHS Improvement, which was established last month to bring together the work of Monitor, the NHS Trust Development Authority, Patient Safety, the National Reporting and Learning System, the Advancing Change Team and the Intensive Support Teams.
It also says that there is a high risk of funding cuts affecting the CQC, either by directly cutting its budget or by increasing the pressure on health and social care services so that they cannot implement inspection recommendations.
However, the CQC rates its preparedness for budget cuts as ‘high’ and for spending cuts as ‘medium’.
In total, of the 17 areas raised as potential concerns in the coming year, the CQC rates 10 as high risk, seven as medium risk and none as low risk.
The regulator admits that there is a high risk that it does not have “the skills and capability to be able to regulate effectively”, although it says it is trying to mitigate this by amending its training and development.
It also warns of a high risk that it will overspend its budget and fail to achieve value for money on contracts.
Other areas flagged as serious concerns include the length of time taken to respond to members of the public’s concerns, delays publishing information and design problems with its methodologies.
The medium concerns include the CQC’s relationships with its partner organisations, its capacity to gather information and securely safeguard data and its ability to correct problems with its performance when they are raised.
It admits that it may not be able to regulate effectively or “make timely, legal regulatory decisions”. It also says that it may not have the capacity to deliver its commitments because of high turnover and recruitment problems.
The report comes at a controversial time for the CQC, which introduced unpopular fee hikes last month and admitted in its March board meeting that it is consistently missing targets on how many inspections it carries out.
A Public Accounts Committee report last year called it ‘ineffective’ and unprepared for its 2016 duties.
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