CQC publishes annual report and accounts for 2018/19

Our annual report and accounts, published today, reflects both our achievements in 2018/19 as well as highlighting areas for improvement. We have made good progress in strengthening the way we regulate health and care services but acknowledge that there is more to do.

In 2018/19 we reached the mid-point of our 2016 to 2021 strategy, which outlined our ambition for a more targeted, responsive and collaborative approach to regulation.

Improvement, innovation and sustainability

Over the past year we have worked hard to drive this work forward, to continue to encourage improvement and to help inform choice for people. As part of this we launched our local system review programme to give a greater understanding of how different parts of the health and social care system need to work together better to improve the people’s experience of care.

Following a commitment from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care we aim to carry out additional local system reviews.

We have continued to share our learning on what drives improvement for providers through our Driving improvement series and our other themed publications, such as our report on oral health in care homes, Smiling Matters and our interim report on restraint, seclusion and segregation.

Intelligence-driven approach

We are continuing to develop our intelligence-driven approach in order to use our information and data to target inspections more effectively when quality changes, and to take decisive action to protect people when needed. 896 inspections in 2018/19 were carried out as a direct result of information that we received from the public, those working in health and social care and others.

We do not always get it right. The treatment of people at Whorlton Hall in County Durham reinforced how difficult it can be to detect abusive practices in institutions with closed cultures. We have commissioned an independent review to look at what we could have done differently to detect this abuse and protect people sooner. We remain committed to continually improving the way we work in order to ensure people are safe and more people can access high quality care.

Working towards a single shared view of quality

Our ambition is to work with others to deliver a single vision of high-quality care. While we have made tangible progress under this priority we need to keep working to ensure that regulation meets the specific needs of providers. 70% of stakeholders who responded to our 2018 stakeholder survey agreed that they share a single view of quality with us, with 90% of providers who responded to our 2019 survey saying that they use our five key questions when conducting quality control and assurance in their organisations.

Efficiency and effectiveness

We worked within our resource budget for 2018/19 and delivered on our spending review commitments. This included investment in our digital systems to support our programme of change and transformation to meet the ambition of our strategy.

We have also made substantial progress in the time within which we publish inspection reports with 86% of inspection reports published on time in 2018/19, compared with 81% in 2017/18. We have further to go to meet our target and will continue to prioritise this.

Ian Trenholm, Chief Executive, at the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said;

“The progress we have made in 2018/19 has been down to the hard work and commitment of the many people who work across this organisation. From the conversations I have day to day I am also absolutely clear that each and every person who works at CQC is committed to improving even further to ensure that more people are able to access high-quality care.

“At CQC we are ultimately accountable to people who use services. We want to make sure that we do all we can to protect people from poor care and encourage improvement, while offering value for money to providers, and being an efficient and effective regulator. In the past year we have made significant strides towards this, and we have a roadmap of activity to allow us to continue to improve.

“This report is an opportunity to take stock of what has gone well, what could be done better, and to learn from it. We have embarked on an important programme to strengthen our digital capability and our organisational systems and processes to make it easier for us to do our jobs, easier for providers to work with us to do their jobs, and easier for the public to use what we know. These changes will not happen all at once – we will take an iterative approach, testing new and redesigned approaches to make sure that the ultimate outcome is more high-quality care for those who need it.”