CQC inspection approach helping fuel emergency care crisis, says trust chief

A trust chief executive says the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) inspection regime is still overly focussed on individual organisations, rather than systems, and this is driving the “risk aversion” which is partly responsible for the emergency care crisis.

Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust CEO Len Richards acknowledged the CQC has started to scrutinise system-wide issues but suggested the “heat” of its regulation is still on individual providers.

Mr Richards told the House of Lords’ public services committee on Wednesday that care homes and nursing homes in his area have declined to take patients ready to be discharged from hospital, due to concerns it would put their CQC accreditation at risk.

He said: “[Last winter] we asked nursing homes and care homes to take patients and they couldn’t take them beyond a certain limit because it would put their accreditation at risk.

“We went to the CQC to try and create some flexibility. Their perspective was very much of an independent regulatory body that would look at the organisation and not look at the system. I think we’ve got an awful long way to go there.

“I think regulation does drive risk aversion… [and] the heat of regulation right at the moment is on individual organisations.

“Therefore, when the CQC come and look at my organisation, they will talk about congestion in the A&E department. They won’t talk about the assessment that we made around there being a greater risk in the community if we didn’t offload ambulances.”

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Source: HSJ, 28 October 2022