CQC publishes business plan for 2016/17

Following formal approval from our Board of executive and non-executive directors last week, we have published our business plan for April 2016 to March 2017 which sets out the first phase of our five-year strategy for health and adult social care regulation in England.

Our plan for 2016/17 is set in the context of the increasing pressures faced by the health and care system in England, driven by changing care needs and financial demands on all public services. Providers and staff are being asked to deliver significant efficiency savings to ensure that the health and care system remains sustainable for the future, while meeting the more complex needs of the population, including those with multiple comorbidities and older people.

As a result, the way in which health and social care is delivered has begun to undergo a fundamental transformation - providers are changing the way services are organised and how they deliver care in response to pressure and opportunities to do things differently. Traditional boundaries between organisations and sectors are blurring and organisations are redesigning their services to meet changing needs.

The way we regulate services is evolving to reflect these changes, although our purpose remains unchanged: to make sure that health and social care services provide people with safe, high-quality and compassionate care, and to encourage improvement. More than ever, our focus will be on regulating for quality in a time of straitened public finances. We will continue to deliver this in 2016/17 under the following priorities:

1. Deliver our approach to regulation: this includes completing our first comprehensive inspection programme, which leads to services being rated as either outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate, as well as ensuring that our registration processes support providers to deliver high-quality care while encouraging innovation. This follows our earlier announcement that we have already completed comprehensive inspections of all 154 acute NHS trusts in England by the end of March 2016, as planned.
2. Shape the future of health and care regulation: this will ensure that our approach remains relevant to a changing environment, including by making better use of intelligence, developing a shared view of quality with providers, and developing a framework with NHS Improvement on how well NHS acute hospitals use their resources.
3. Build an effective, efficient, learning and values-based CQC: this covers developing the skills we need internally to embed our culture and values and to respond to the changing needs of the organisation and wider system.
4. Demonstrate the difference CQC makes: this covers evaluating, measuring and reporting on our performance, quality, management assurance, impact and value for money, using this evidence to learn and improve, and to be publicly accountable.

We will deliver our business plan against a budget of £236million (made up of grant-in-aid from the Department of Health and income from fees); this is £13million less than our allocated budget for 2015/16 (which we spent £234million of by year-end).

Next month, we will publish our full strategy for regulation over the next five years, following our public consultation earlier this year. This will include further details about how we will target and tailor our inspection activities once the comprehensive programme has completed, as well as how we will develop a shared view of quality with providers within the resources available.