We monitor, inspect and regulate services that provide health and social care.
Activities we regulate include:
- Treatment, care and support provided by hospitals, GPs dentists, ambulances and mental health services.
- Treatment, care and support services for adults in care homes and in people's own homes (both personal and nursing care).
- Services for people whose rights are restricted under the Mental Health Act.
Types of services
Care homes
We inspect care homes across England, including residential and nursing homes.
In the community
We inspect community-based services including services for people with learning disabilities and substance misuse services.
GPs and doctors
We inspect GP practices, walk-in centres and out-of-hours services.
Hospices
We inspect hospice services that provide care for people who have life-limiting conditions or are at the end of their lives.
Mental health
Mental health services that we inspect include those for detained patients.
Reports on mental health services
We also help protect people whose rights are restricted under the Mental Health Act
Services in your home
We inspect home care agencies, mobile doctors and services over the phone.
Cross sector inspections
Sometimes we work with other inspectorates to carry out joint inspections of services.
We also carry out system-wide inspections. A system inspection assesses a group of services in a local area. This is so we can see how individual services work together to provide care across the system as a whole.
Children's services
We work in partnership with other inspectorates to inspect health services for children.
Defence medical services
We work with the Defence Medical Services Regulator (DMSR) to inspect defence medical treatment facilities.
Secure settings
We carry out joint inspections with HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) and other inspectorates.
Urgent and emergency care systems
We carry out localised system-wide inspections across urgent and emergency care services.