Care Quality Commission (CQC) update

In January 2015, the media and national news were running stories of a small number of practices which had fallen foul of the CQC Inspectors and had been placed in Special Measures. http://dailym.ai/1EWYmlg

The publicity did little to help the surgeries in question or, improve the popularity of the CQC. However, it did make everyone involved in primary healthcare take notice and realise that the CQC were not approaching this with a ‘veiled threat’.

More happily, it is becoming apparent that, the majority of practices are being rated as good and it is only a very, very small minority that are experiencing difficulty from the inspections. One practice, in Northumberland, has recently been rated as ‘outstanding’ and the CQC report highlighted the following positive feedback:

• Individual care plans developed for 160 patients and a screening programme aimed to detect early signs of dementia in place for 2 years.
• Excellent use of IT tools to identify patients with complex needs.
• Close working partnerships with other health and social care organisations with team meetings twice a month to discuss the needs of high risk patients.
• Proactive involvement with the local community. The PPG had held awareness events to highlight risks of alcohol abuse.
• Open culture between partners and staff, with staff encouraged to share thoughts; raise concerns and make suggestions for improvement.
• Strong working ethic of collaboration across the whole staff and a common focus on improving outcomes for patients.
• Feedback from patients had been overwhelmingly positive, with particular praise for the efforts of the staff.
• The practice provided an innovative; caring; effective; responsive and well led service that met the needs of the population it serves.

Hopefully, the CQC will continue to find ‘outstanding’ surgeries and the majority reach a grading of ‘good’. Whilst stories of Special Measures, become a thing of the past.

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