CQC’s new Chief Inspector of Hospitals, Sir Mike Richards is introducing radical changes to the way hospitals in England are inspected. Sir Mike Richards said he will lead significantly bigger inspection teams headed up by clinical and other experts that include trained members of the public. They will spend longer inspecting hospitals and cover every site that delivers acute services and eight key services areas: A&E; maternity, paediatrics; acute medical and surgical pathways; care for the frail elderly; end of life care; and outpatients.
The inspections will be a mixture of unannounced and announced and they will include inspections in the evenings and weekends when patients are more likely to experience poor care. Each inspection will provide the public with a clear picture of the quality of care in their local hospital, exposing poor and mediocre care and highlighting the many hospitals providing good and excellent care.
Sir Mike Richards will decide whether hospitals are to be rated as outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate. Where there are failures in care, he will highlight what needs to be addressed and ask the Trusts along with, Monitor, the NHS Trust Development Authority and NHS England to make sure a clear programme is put in place to deal with the problems.
Sir Mike Richards said: “As Chief Inspector of Hospitals, I need to know and to be completely open about where good and bad care is being delivered. That is why I am publishing my first wave of inspections. There is too much variation in the quality of care patients receive – poor hospitals will need to up their game and learn from the best. I will not tolerate poor or mediocre care.
“These new-style inspections will allow us to get a much more detailed picture of care in hospitals than has ever been possible before in England. Inspections will be supported by an improved method for identifying risks and with much more information direct from patients and their families, and hospital staff.”
By the end of 2015 CQC will have inspected all acute hospitals and the results will be published. Sir Mike Richards is now issuing a call to action for clinicians and members of the public to join the inspection teams.
