CQC highlights changes following Francis report

26 March 2013

The Care Quality Commission welcomes the Government’s swift response to the recommendations set out in Robert Francis’s report into the failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

CQC Chief Executive David Behan said: “Robert Francis’s report is defining for everyone involved in healthcare.  We will bring forward important changes including the appointment of a chief inspector of hospitals.

“We are also clear that we will inspect acute hospitals and  mental health trusts better by changing what we look at when we inspect so that we focus on the four key areas that are most important to people: safety; caring; effectiveness; and how well they are led.

“The appointment of a Chief Inspector of Hospitals will enable us to put a sharper focus on hospital care – really getting to grips with what’s most important to patients and their families.

“We will introduce expert inspection teams that include specialist inspectors, clinical and other experts, and people with experience of care. We will also introduce national teams with specialist expertise to carry out in depth reviews of hospitals with significant or long standing problems.”

CQC’s purpose is to make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, high quality care that they have a right to expect. We expect those services to continuously improve.

Our role in this is to ensure providers are meeting fundamental standards. It is the primary duty of hospitals, care homes and other providers of health and social care services to ensure their services improve

CQC has also committed to using data, intelligence and evidence in a more sophisticated way, so that it identifies, predicts and responds to varying standards of care more quickly.

It will also listen better to people’s experience of moving between different services, work better with other regulators and partners to share information and evidence and coordinate our inspections and activities and publish better information for the public, including an overall rating of a service

Ends

For media enquiries call the CQC press office on 0207 448 9401 during office hours or out of hours on 07917 232 143. For general enquiries call 03000 616161.