We are today publishing a formal consultation on our new strategy. The draft is the product of over 10,000 interactions with stakeholders and sets a bold ambition for the organisation over the next five years.
The world of health and social care is changing. So are we.
The pandemic has forced health and social care to think differently, and we are no exception. For CQC, it has accelerated the need for us to change. Our draft strategy has been developed to enable more effective regulation for the future and support services to keep people safe.
We need to make changes to the way we regulate so that it’s more relevant, working with health and care services to find solutions to problems and improve outcomes for everyone. We also want to be more flexible to help us manage risk and uncertainty.
Our strategy is built on four themes that together determine the changes we want to make. Running through each theme is our ambition to improve people’s care by looking at how well health and care systems are working and how they’re acting to reduce inequalities. We know that it’s not enough to look at how one service operates in isolation. It is how services work together that has a real impact on people’s experiences and outcomes
The four themes in our draft strategy are:
- People and communities: We want our regulation to be driven by people’s experiences and what they expect and need from health and care services. We’ll focus on what matters to the public, and to local communities, when they access, use, and move between services.
- Smarter regulation: We want our assessments to be more flexible and dynamic. We’ll update ratings more often, so everybody has an up-to-date view of quality. Being smarter with data means our visits will be more targeted, with a sharper focus on what we need to look at.
- Safety through learning: We want all services to have stronger safety cultures. We’ll expect learning and improvement to be the primary response to all safety concerns in all types of service. When safety doesn’t improve, and services don’t learn lessons, we’ll take action to protect people.
- Accelerating improvement: We want to do more to make improvement happen. We’ll target the priority areas that need support the most. We want to see improvement within individual services, and in the way they work together as a system to make sure people get the care they need.
You can read our full strategy in more detail here: www.cqc.org.uk/strategy2021consultation
We want to hear what you think.
The consultation will run for 8 weeks, closing on 4 March 2021.
Later in January we plan to launch a second consultation on proposals that will help us in our response to the pandemic in the short term, while also laying the foundations to deliver our next strategy and future regulatory model.
The changes proposed are designed to enable us to assess performance and rate in a more flexible and responsive way, meeting the challenges posed by the pandemic.
We’ll release more details about this consultation in due course.
