Independent Inspection

The new Chief Inspector of Hospitals in England and Wales - Professor Sir Mike Richards - has issued the following new strategy for his inspection teams - which will operate under the overall control of the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

1. Sir Mike will lead new hospital inspection teams, headed by a senior clinician or executive working alongside senior CQC inspectors. The teams will include professional and clinical staff and other experts, including trained members of the public who we call experts by experience.
2. The teams will be significantly bigger than at present and will spend longer inspecting hospitals, covering every site that delivers acute services and eight key services areas: A&E; maternity; paediatrics; acute medical and surgical pathways; frail elderly; end of life care; and outpatients. They will look at additional specialities where necessary.
3. The inspections will be a mixture of unannounced and announced and they will include inspections in the evenings and weekends when we know people can experience poor care.
4. Inspection teams will make better use of information and evidence, using new surveillance indicators to guide our teams on when, where and what to inspect. Before we inspect, we will assess a wide range of quantitative data, including information from our partners in the system and from the public.
5. Each inspection will provide the public with a clear picture of the quality of care in their hospitals. We will decide whether hospitals are rated as outstanding; good; require improvement; or inadequate.
6. If a hospital requires improvement or is inadequate we will expect it to improve, but ultimately we want all hospitals to improve. Where there are failures in care we will work with Monitor, NHS England and the Trust Development Authority to make sure that a clear programme is put in place to deal with the failure and to hold people to account.
7. By the end of 2015, CQC teams will have inspected all acute hospitals in this way.

Sounds like they really mean business - and I was especially interested to hear that these teams will include trained members of the public.

I will be very keen to find out more about that particular initiative - so watch this space.

My only other thoughts at this stage are - what's happening in Scotland and wouldn't this be a great model to employ in other areas of public life including care homes and schools?