Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether the Care Quality Commission plans to introduce a public review system for care homes.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care providers in England.

The CQC is responsible for developing and consulting on its methodology for inspecting providers.

The CQC’s inspection regime provides a comprehensive assessment of provider’s performance. During an inspection, the CQC asks five questions of every service and provider; are they safe, effective, caring, well led and responsive to people’s needs.

The CQC’s inspections take into account the views of patients and service users. Prior to carrying out an inspection, the CQC considers any complaints or concerns from members of the public as part of its intelligence on where and when to inspect. During an inspection the CQC gathers the views of people who use services so it gets a full picture of the level of service at a provider.

Following an inspection the CQC rates a provider on a four point scale running from outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate. This gives patients and the public a fair, balanced and easy to understand assessment of performance of a provider.

These new rigorous inspections ensure that the full picture of services at a particular provider is known and published on the CQC website, and if required, the provider knows what it must do to improve.