Our annual report and accounts look at the progress we made in 2018/19, as well as the areas we need to concentrate on during 2019/20.
In 2018/19 we reached the mid-point of our 2016 to 2021 strategy to develop a more targeted, responsive and collaborative approach to regulation.
We worked during the year to improve areas of our performance, such as the time it takes to publish inspection reports. We also made good progress towards meeting our four strategic priorities.
But we know we have more work to do to complete the delivery of our strategy, and to change and improve how we measure our performance. To do this, we started a period of change and transformation led by our new Chief Executive. We are working to strengthen our digital capability and our 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.
Our strategy sets out 4 priorities:
Priority 1: Encourage improvement, innovation and sustainability in care
We have made good progress towards this priority. We have encouraged improvements at provider and system levels. And we are increasingly using the full range of our enforcement powers to protect people.
We have more to do to with our work in local areas. We want to make sure we really understand how people experience care in different parts of the health and care system, and to look at how new ways of delivering care can help.
Priority 2: Deliver an intelligence driven approach to regulation
We want to use information from the public and providers more effectively. This will allow us to target our resources where the risk to the quality of care is greatest and to check where quality is improving. We also want to introduce a more proportionate approach to registration.
We have made some progress with our challenging plans for this priority. For example, we are making improvements to the way people share their experiences of care with us. We are also developing a new and more flexible registration service.
To fully realise our ambition to be intelligence-driven, we need to strengthen our digital capability. This has meant that we spent some time reshaping our plans, projects and timescales, requiring a substantial focus from colleagues right across CQC. We ended the year in a good position to drive forward the work we need to do in 2019/20.
Ratings profile as at 31 March 2019
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Priority 3: Promote a single shared view of quality
We have made tangible progress under this priority.
The majority of stakeholders who responded to our 2018 stakeholder survey agreed that they share a single view of quality with us. And most providers that responded to our 2019 provider survey agreed that CQC, commissioners and other regulators have a shared definition of what good quality care looks like in their service.
This is positive, and we want to keep working to reduce the demands of regulation on providers, and to continue to promote the single shared view of what good looks like.
Priority 4: Improve our efficiency and effectiveness
We have made progress under some areas of this priority, including substantial improvements in the time within which we publish inspection reports. However, we have more to do, and we missed some important performance commitments.
We managed within our resource budget for 2018/19 and delivered on our spending review commitments. Our expenditure was £227.7 million, and our capital investment was £10.3 million