FPM reports on several significant announcements from the CQC in recent days. 

CQC Pauses Review of ICSs

The Health and Social Care Act 2022 gave the CQC powers to assess whether Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) were meeting the needs of the local communities that they served. However, this was paused due to the last general election and the Dash review. Now that NHSE has been abolished and ICBs required to reduce staff numbers, the CQC are no longer reviewing ICSs, and have paused the work for at least six months. In the meantime, they will focus on their 4 priorities. As a reminder, they are:

1. Ensuring the CQC can publish reports of assessments that have taken place, and providers have been waiting too long for
2. Increasing the number of assessments they are completing each month, so they give providers up to date ratings and ensure the public understand the quality of care in services in their area
3. Clearing the CQC registration backlog so new services can start delivering care and they support increased capacity in the system
4. Making sure the CQC has acted promptly on information of concern and notifications.

Review of Technology

A report into the CQC’s organisational transformation and the technology they relied on lays bare some severe failings in management, including these stark quotes:

• “The total spend on the regulatory transformation programme, which includes the regulatory platform and provider portal, has been £99 million from inception in July 2019 to date. The vast majority of the benefits expected to be delivered have not yet been achieved.”
• Less than 30% of the expected deliverables have been signed off. Significant variations exist between different CQC functional departments, with some achieving 0%
• Only 5% of the benefits have been achieved, with 27% in progress and 58% lacking a planned timeline. 8% of benefits have been descoped. The savings to date are £0.3M against a plan of over £10M.
• The CQC didn’t adopt technical and management standards, leading to unsafe and ineffective programme execution. There was a heavy reliance on contractors which led to high costs and a lack of continuity. The programme became siloed, hindering collaboration and effective teamwork.

Even the new Chief Executive Julian Hartley has concluded that “the findings in this report evidence that the way the digital transformation programme was carried out was completely unacceptable”.

You can read the full report here.

GP Digital Services: How PSED Aligns with SAF

In their latest email bulletin, the CQC flagged that new advice has been published from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) which aims to help GP practices ensure equality is embedded in their services, especially when there is a risk of digital exclusion.

Digitisation has huge potential and is already helping GPs to provide more services in their communities, but there are Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) duties which have to be considered when offering these digital services.

As the EHRC says on their website:

In England, the PSED aligns with key quality statements in the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) single assessment framework. CQC uses the quality statements in their inspections of GP practices. Two particularly relevant statements are:

• equity in access
• equity in experiences and outcomes

In Wales, the aims of the PSED are also reflected in the Health and Care Quality Standards 2023, in particular in the ‘equitable’, ‘person-centred’, 'timely' and 'culture' standards.

First Mental Health Chief Inspector Appointed at CQC

The CQC have also announced that from May 2025, Dr Arun Chopra will become the first Chief Inspector for mental health services, a move that recognise the importance of such services in all of our lives, and which need specialist regulation.