The CQC audits GP practices and other healthcare providers whether they're ready for it or not - so make sure you are ready to give the best account of yourself and your staff, and be fully compliant.

Compliance can sometimes be tedious and time-consuming. But it’s also essential for passing regulatory inspections, and protects you, your staff and your organisation from the very serious consequences of non-compliance, up to and including injury and death.

Policies may be dry and seemingly always the same – but they may change more often than you realise, in subtle ways, and be forgotten about due to business as “usual” tasks. Take the time to read why policy compliance matters in your healthcare organisation, and how to ensure it in a manageable way.

Tailor Templates (and check the details)

Don’t assume that policy template documents are immediately right for your organisation – you should treat them as the basic outline, and then tailor them to your organisation, adding specific details where necessary. Don’t forget to change any [insert name here] boxes in your policies!

Battle for Hearts and Minds

You have to communicate the benefits of compliance to staff, and make the documents easy to use and clearly applicable to them. That way you will “take your staff with you” on the journey towards updating and adhering to policies and procedures.

Benefits of Compliance

• You will be working according to best practice, so people are kept safe and things are done as efficiently as possible 
• You will be complying with your legal duty, as set out under legislation
• You will be complying with regulatory duties as set out by the bodies which regulate your sector.

Dangers of AI

You may be tempted to simply ask ChatGPT or another Artificial Intelligence (AI) programme to write your policy or procedure documents for you. Try to resist this temptation. Yes, you may get a document which has relevant sounding sentences in, but without human input the document can often be meaningless and may come across as strange or oddly written – very impersonal, and quite general (which is one thing you really don’t want in an important policy – you want it specific to your organisation so it's helpful and encourages people to use it).

Sometimes, using AI doesn’t offer anything more helpful or time saving than using a template from a respected or trusted source like the NHS online template examples. AI may be useful for summarising, checking, or very rough drafting, but it should not be relied upon to produce the final version.

How FPM Core Can Help

• Do you have visibility of which policies and procedures in your organisation have gone out of date?
• Do you know who has read which, and who hasn’t?
• Do you know how often a certain policy has to be updated, and how long it has been since it was done?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no”, then FPM Core can help.

Key Features:

• CQC-Ready Documents

Pre-loaded with the CQC Framework, FPM Core aligns your policies directly with Key Questions and Quality Statements, simplifying the compliance journey.

• Evidence Archive for Passing Inspections

Attach multiple forms of evidence directly to the system, ensuring you have concrete proof of procedure adherence at inspection time.

• Automatic Update Notifications

Automatically notify staff of policy changes and prompt acknowledgment, keeping everyone informed and accountable.

• Powerful Reports

Simple dashboards and data feeds provide insights into the effectiveness of policies across the organisation. Identify and address areas of improvement with precision.

• Zero-Paper Status

Embrace sustainability and data security with FPM Core's paperless approach. Demonstrate your commitment to both the environment and secure data practices.

In a world where compliance is paramount, FPM Core stands out as a game-changer, offering a comprehensive suite of features to empower organisations on their journey to excellence. Let Core help you avoid the risks of non-compliance with your policies and procedures. Click here to book your demo today.

If you have a request for a new policy to be written, contact us at mail@firstpracticemanagement.co.uk