The Committee went well beyond its value for money remit, criticising the CQC’s lack of strategic focus and leadership, inconsistency of its inspection regime, failure to strike the right balance between registration and inspection, and the lack of measures of performance or impact of its own work. The Department of Health has also recently published the findings of its own Capability Review, setting out 23 recommendations which it expects the Commission to address focused on strategy and performance, accountability and governance, and the regulatory model.
The early reports into the events at Mid Staffordshire hospital also questioned the CQC’s predecessor – the Healthcare Commission – which gave the trust a clean bill of health at the time it was responsible for some serious failings in the quality of care. The full public inquiry, led by Robert Francis QC, is yet to report. However, from the evidence presented, the early indications are that it will have something to say about the role of the quality regulator and the strategic health authority which was led at the time by Cynthia Bower, currently Chief Executive of CQC. Given this, it is perhaps of little surprise that she has decided to step down later this year in a managed transition.
These reports all highlight some of the challenges the Care Quality Commission has faced since it was set up in 2009. But are we expecting too much from a quality regulator?
The Commission had a troubled beginning, exacerbated by a lack of clarity about its role. Politicians must bear some responsibility for this – it is no good preaching the virtues of light touch regulation, and then blaming the regulator for not taking a more interventionist approach when problems emerge. They are also responsible for giving it such an enormous and complex task. As well as undertaking inspections, the Commission has registered 23,000 organisations in 40,000 locations since it was established and will embark on registering 10,000 GP practices later this year. Only last week, it emerged that it had been asked by the Secretary of State to inspect more than 300 abortion clinics at short notice. As the Commission’s Chair, Jo Williams, pointed out in correspondence obtained by the BBC, this will necessarily reduce its capacity to inspect hospitals and social care providers.
There are somewhere in the region of 1 million patient contacts every day in the NHS. Add to this the fact that approximately 1.7 million adults received social care services following a local authority assessment and the scale of the challenge for CQC is clear. It is impossible to expect a regulator to prevent the incidence of poor quality care and yet it often appears it is the first to be blamed.
Frontline workers are the first line of defence against poor quality care – it is the responsibility of every clinician and care giver to speak up when they see care that is below acceptable standards and to act to remedy this. But we know that staff often find this difficult. They may work in organisations that are disempowering, that alienate them from the people they are caring for, or where there is a blame culture that discourages them from speaking up.
It is vital that the boards and senior managers of provider organisations create an open culture of reporting and are held accountable for the quality of care. In the nuclear industry the senior person responsible for safety is able to report issues ‘outside the line’, that is outside their direct line management, to the Chair of the board or equivalent. Do we need to identify someone in every hospital who can go outside the line if they have significant concerns about the quality or safety of care without fears of repercussions?
While the CQC must address its shortcomings, it is time to move on to a wider debate about how to design a system of quality assurance that patients and service-users can have confidence in.
Thanks Anna - timely piece. We need a debate that allows everyone to understand that Boards and the accountable officer [i.e. me in our organisation] are accountable for quality; that individual practitioners have professional duties and responsibilities around quality; and the CQC merely regulates quality. This should drive the right culture. Add to that the authority for all staff to report incidents and to whistleblow and you have a good start. That is what we are trying to achieve her at LCH.
If we believe the regulator is to blame when things go wrong, then we are in a bad state of affairs. The latest changes and the Bill should allow us to tidy up regulation, clarify responsibilities and focus.
Dear Anna,
Thank you for this untypical thinking on the CQC. The reactive culture of health and social care moves us too quickly to blame which reduces the potential for deeper reflection on the issues you highlight around culture, values and safety to report 'outside the line'
Policing, inspecting and regulating does not keep people safe - it can only ever be good people that do that. The culture requires deep change - my own point of view is that compassion lies at the heart of the change required. If interested to know more re our work on embedding compassion
Looking at some of the prepartory work we have been expected to undertake by our (out going) PCT managers, they thought it entirely appropriate for the question "how do you record 'hiding / disguising' medication" - we dont - nursing homes do, I am sure the dentists dont do this either? The CQC cannot expect to treat GP practices the way they look at Care Homes, we do very different things. This latest fad in healthcare regulation of one size fits all - well it doesnt does it? What is the correlation between Care Homes Out of Hours Providers Dentists and Doctors very little! The CQC needs to be compartmentalised and each section needs to produce its own standards and specialise in that standard - but dont read the reports or submissions - go and look.
Thank you for this thought-provoking article. It is abundantly clear to anyone involved in healthcare regulation that the CQC remit is far too complex and broad-ranging for any one organisation to manage effectively. Whilst I certainly agree that the regulator must not be held directly responsible for the quality of care provided across the health and social care spectrum, I do have concerns for the requirements of regulation as they stand and the ability of many organisations to meet the challenges the regulations pose. Care at the bedside/deskside should be provided by competent, empathetic people who hold the quality of what they do at the highest possible level. If there are insufficient people to do this, quality will suffer. If there is insufficient empathy and care, quality will again suffer. We seem to have lost the ability to find this mix.
It is heartening to read this view Anna. I had a role in the design and implementation of the new regulatory system at CQC. Having been a doctor in frontline services prior to joining CQC, I was acutely aware that the responsibility for quality is firmly with staff and the provider itself – a view shared commonly in CQC. Adding to Rob’s comment, it would also be sad if an impending CQC inspection was the only reason that a provider or staff member wanted to do all they can to provide a service that meets essential standards.
The time to design and implement a completely new regulatory system was very short and the volumes of new registrations in 2010 and early 2011 enormous. Getting the tools refined, adapting to the different contexts and creating the most effective steady state operational aspects were always going to take time. From the outset, we described the change programme as a 5 year one - CQC is only now just ending its third year. An enormous amount has been achieved but there will always be a lot more to do.
Thanks Anna
On the frontline of care my partner witnesses and is passionate about providing high quality care for cancer patients. What he frequently highlights is that in his depth they are under staffed and under pressure to complete treatments at speed. The situation for staff is clear. They strive for good quality but managers see patients as targets. Some nurses on radio 4 were being criticised for a lack of compassion when dealing with the elderly. I would argue that when staff are under pressure, under valued and under funded then quality slides. The regulator is there purely to measure but measuring alone does not make something grow! The responsibility lies with departments and quality assurance needs to be rigorous and accountability should lie with the people working in the service.
Thank you Anna,
A balanced and thoughtful article in what often appears an unbalanced and over-reactive world. Undoubtedly the vast majority of us share the view that poor standards must never be tolerated, least of all for our vulnerable citizens. Often it seems that some believe quality can be regulated into a service, but in reality Quality comes from within the service - with the right leadership, incentives and a culture of transparency and openness. Services where people are central, and where everyone involved is proactivley encouraged and committed to constantly discussing what is working well and what isn't working well - and where raising concerns is encouraged and celebrated. This together with commitment and resource to deliver consistent high quality services and to take appropriate and timely action to put right anything that goes wrong and adapt to prevent reocurrence.
Moreover, perhaps we should better recognise and appreciate core values more than some of the measures typically used? Firstly, staff who have the essential but often overlooked core values including kindness, compassion, dignity and respect. Then of course the qualifications, skills and knowledge. This is what vulnerable people say is important to them.
Perhaps all of us working in health & social care and support, could assist by working more closely together to develop approaches that seek out and celebrate such qualities in action?
‘It is vital that the boards and senior managers of provider organisations create an open culture of reporting and are held accountable for the quality of care.’
Exactly Anna but how will this be achieved? Without these conditions it is not safe for staff to report concerns. They will be silenced by being suspended and dealt with very slowly and unjustly, very often disappearing without trace, too ill to work anymore.
We at CAUSE (Campaign Against Unnecessary Suspensions and Exclusions in the NHS UK) know these scenarios too well, from personal experience and through providing information and support for the last 9 years.
With the present management lack of accountability and lack of scrutiny of employment practices, we despair of seeing any improvements.
Julie Fagan, founder member of CAUSE (suspension-nhs.org)
Anna is right to question some of the criticism facing the CQC and to point to the key role played by Ministers and others who still believe in light touch regulation. For me the rot starts at the top and the top must take responsibility for the regime that allowed the Staffordshire situation to arise.
Many insiders will agree that iatrogenic disease is rife, quality is mixed and many patients receive late, wrong and damaging treatment causing real and permanent loss. The only reason there are not greater costs to the NHS is that compensation is only given if the patient can prove negligence. I have heard it said several times that no fault compensation schemes are impossible because of the costs involved.
Unfortunately it would seem the main function of the CQC has been to accept uncritically the role given by government of providing false reassurance on the generality while identifying a few outliers. Add to this the severe cuts in the CQC’s budget and the extra work piled upon it, and we have a tragedy – or scandal, call it what you may – waiting to happen. Who will be willing to pick up the poisoned chalice from the recently resigned CEO, Cynthia Bower?
The CQC should not be giving false reassurance. It must honestly reflect the true position to managers and politicians rather than the ambiguous "health improvement" role so readily adopted. Matters will only get worse as the government’s cuts to the NHS budget force hospitals to take dangerous cost-cutting measures. Take a look at how nursing loads on hospital wards have increased over the last two years, and tell me this is a sign of improvement.
What is required is:
• better quality comparisons with other countries using more up-to-date and meaningful data on mortality, outcomes and serious untoward incidents;
• licensing hospitals for clinical case mix;
• accurate reporting and decisive action regarding serious untoward incidents;
• clear and transparent financial incentives and penalties for quality.
The problem is not so much the expectations we have of the CQC itself, but rather the expectations that we (especially politicians) have of the whole concept of organisational regulation.
Every time there is a failure, an additional layer of organisational assurance or regulation is added (once again locking the stable door after the particular horse involved in the particular failure has bolted).
In my view, we are well past the point where an additional amount of organisational regulation produces an equivalent amount of added value. Of course, it's easy to say, after a failure, "well, we have to do something..." and rightly so, but why another layer of organisational regulation?
We set up quasi-autonomous organisations so that they can be accountable, and then we undermine that accountability by adding layers of regulation. If an organisation fails, it needs to be held to account, not cocooned in regulation. And if organisations were able to devote at least some of the resources they currently use to provide external assurance, and apply it to internal quality improvement instead, who knows what level of benefit might be added?
But the focus on organisational regulation also diminishes the responsibility of individuals for their actions and for their colleagues actions. The professional regulation function is perhaps where much more attention should be focussed. Getting organisations such as the NMC to operate effectively and to develop a culture of professional accountability is likely to have much greater benefits than more organisational regulation.
And by the way, every NHS organisation should already have a NED who acts as the Whisleblowing Champion, the point of last resort for staff with concerns. And any Chief Executive worth their salt will make sure that their staff know that their door is always open to genuine concerns.
Comments
If we believe the regulator is to blame when things go wrong, then we are in a bad state of affairs. The latest changes and the Bill should allow us to tidy up regulation, clarify responsibilities and focus.
Thank you for this untypical thinking on the CQC. The reactive culture of health and social care moves us too quickly to blame which reduces the potential for deeper reflection on the issues you highlight around culture, values and safety to report 'outside the line'
Policing, inspecting and regulating does not keep people safe - it can only ever be good people that do that. The culture requires deep change - my own point of view is that compassion lies at the heart of the change required. If interested to know more re our work on embedding compassion
The time to design and implement a completely new regulatory system was very short and the volumes of new registrations in 2010 and early 2011 enormous. Getting the tools refined, adapting to the different contexts and creating the most effective steady state operational aspects were always going to take time. From the outset, we described the change programme as a 5 year one - CQC is only now just ending its third year. An enormous amount has been achieved but there will always be a lot more to do.
On the frontline of care my partner witnesses and is passionate about providing high quality care for cancer patients. What he frequently highlights is that in his depth they are under staffed and under pressure to complete treatments at speed. The situation for staff is clear. They strive for good quality but managers see patients as targets. Some nurses on radio 4 were being criticised for a lack of compassion when dealing with the elderly. I would argue that when staff are under pressure, under valued and under funded then quality slides. The regulator is there purely to measure but measuring alone does not make something grow! The responsibility lies with departments and quality assurance needs to be rigorous and accountability should lie with the people working in the service.
A balanced and thoughtful article in what often appears an unbalanced and over-reactive world. Undoubtedly the vast majority of us share the view that poor standards must never be tolerated, least of all for our vulnerable citizens. Often it seems that some believe quality can be regulated into a service, but in reality Quality comes from within the service - with the right leadership, incentives and a culture of transparency and openness. Services where people are central, and where everyone involved is proactivley encouraged and committed to constantly discussing what is working well and what isn't working well - and where raising concerns is encouraged and celebrated. This together with commitment and resource to deliver consistent high quality services and to take appropriate and timely action to put right anything that goes wrong and adapt to prevent reocurrence.
Moreover, perhaps we should better recognise and appreciate core values more than some of the measures typically used? Firstly, staff who have the essential but often overlooked core values including kindness, compassion, dignity and respect. Then of course the qualifications, skills and knowledge. This is what vulnerable people say is important to them.
Perhaps all of us working in health & social care and support, could assist by working more closely together to develop approaches that seek out and celebrate such qualities in action?
Exactly Anna but how will this be achieved? Without these conditions it is not safe for staff to report concerns. They will be silenced by being suspended and dealt with very slowly and unjustly, very often disappearing without trace, too ill to work anymore.
We at CAUSE (Campaign Against Unnecessary Suspensions and Exclusions in the NHS UK) know these scenarios too well, from personal experience and through providing information and support for the last 9 years.
With the present management lack of accountability and lack of scrutiny of employment practices, we despair of seeing any improvements.
Julie Fagan, founder member of CAUSE (suspension-nhs.org)
Many insiders will agree that iatrogenic disease is rife, quality is mixed and many patients receive late, wrong and damaging treatment causing real and permanent loss. The only reason there are not greater costs to the NHS is that compensation is only given if the patient can prove negligence. I have heard it said several times that no fault compensation schemes are impossible because of the costs involved.
Unfortunately it would seem the main function of the CQC has been to accept uncritically the role given by government of providing false reassurance on the generality while identifying a few outliers. Add to this the severe cuts in the CQC’s budget and the extra work piled upon it, and we have a tragedy – or scandal, call it what you may – waiting to happen. Who will be willing to pick up the poisoned chalice from the recently resigned CEO, Cynthia Bower?
The CQC should not be giving false reassurance. It must honestly reflect the true position to managers and politicians rather than the ambiguous "health improvement" role so readily adopted. Matters will only get worse as the government’s cuts to the NHS budget force hospitals to take dangerous cost-cutting measures. Take a look at how nursing loads on hospital wards have increased over the last two years, and tell me this is a sign of improvement.
What is required is:
• better quality comparisons with other countries using more up-to-date and meaningful data on mortality, outcomes and serious untoward incidents;
• licensing hospitals for clinical case mix;
• accurate reporting and decisive action regarding serious untoward incidents;
• clear and transparent financial incentives and penalties for quality.
Every time there is a failure, an additional layer of organisational assurance or regulation is added (once again locking the stable door after the particular horse involved in the particular failure has bolted).
In my view, we are well past the point where an additional amount of organisational regulation produces an equivalent amount of added value. Of course, it's easy to say, after a failure, "well, we have to do something..." and rightly so, but why another layer of organisational regulation?
We set up quasi-autonomous organisations so that they can be accountable, and then we undermine that accountability by adding layers of regulation. If an organisation fails, it needs to be held to account, not cocooned in regulation. And if organisations were able to devote at least some of the resources they currently use to provide external assurance, and apply it to internal quality improvement instead, who knows what level of benefit might be added?
But the focus on organisational regulation also diminishes the responsibility of individuals for their actions and for their colleagues actions. The professional regulation function is perhaps where much more attention should be focussed. Getting organisations such as the NMC to operate effectively and to develop a culture of professional accountability is likely to have much greater benefits than more organisational regulation.
And by the way, every NHS organisation should already have a NED who acts as the Whisleblowing Champion, the point of last resort for staff with concerns. And any Chief Executive worth their salt will make sure that their staff know that their door is always open to genuine concerns.
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