ICS leaders must have courage to put quality first, says CQC chief inspector

The Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) outgoing chief inspector of hospitals has called on integrated care system leaders to be ‘courageous’ in putting quality first.

Speaking at the HSJ’s Patient Safety Congress, Ted Baker implored ICS leaders to not focus solely on financial and operational targets, although he also acknowledged “there is a lot of pressure to meet [those] targets”.

In his speech yesterday, he said: “It’s often taken really courageous leaders to put quality first ahead of financial targets and operational targets… You have to be courageous to do that and I think some of the leaders of the ICSs, they need to be that courageous.

“They need to focus on quality and safety within an [ICS] and not, if you like, go down the kind of NHS path of focusing on financial and operational targets.

“If we can do that, we can have a really transformative effect on integrated care across [the] system. I suppose that’s what I’m asking for: courage from all of us to tackle some of the cultural issues in the NHS."

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Source: HSJ, 22 September 2021