We have announced the eleven acute, community and mental health providers that we will inspect in February 2016, as part of our planned comprehensive programme.
The inspections – which are carried out by a mixture of inspectors, healthcare professionals, and experts by experience – will assess whether the service overall is: safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs and well-led.
Following the inspection, each provider will receive an overall rating of either: Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement or Inadequate. Additionally, each of the eight core services will also be rated in the same way to provide performance information at a service, hospital and trust level.
Our inspection regime allows us to get under the skin of services better than ever before and to provide a clear picture of what care is really like. We hope this encourages improvement and helps people to make informed choices about their care.
As of Monday 28 September, we have published the following ratings:
- 2 NHS Trusts as Outstanding
- 33 as Good
- 86 Requires Improvement and;
- 14 as Inadequate.
The providers listed below have been selected for their planned, comprehensive inspections for different reasons. These include hospitals that are priorities for inspection and those that are low risk, following CQC’s analysis of information of acute and mental health services and a commitment to inspect different types of trusts in different parts of the country.
Acute
- South Devon Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
- Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust
- Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Mental Health trusts
- Dudley and Walsall Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust
- Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust
- Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
- Greater Manchester West Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust
Combined acute and community health services
- Torbay and Southern Devon Health and Care NHS Trust
- Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust
- The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust
Community Health Services
- Hounslow and Richmond Community Healthcare NHS Trust
During February, we do not have any planned inspections that follow-up on previous visits to check that improvements have been made or those that focus on specific services or issues (known as focused inspections).
Our inspections that are in response to particular concerns (for example, based on information that we have received) will continue to be unannounced.
As outlined in our business plan, we expect to complete our inspections of acute NHS trusts by the end of March 2016, and our inspections of acute specialist, mental health, community healthcare and ambulance trusts by the end of June 2016.