Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the reason was for the time taken for the Quality Care Commission to publish the report of its August inspection of Medway Hospital's accident and emergency unit.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care providers in England. The CQC is responsible for assessing whether providers are meeting the registration requirements; this includes the decision of when to publish its inspection reports on individual hospitals.

The CQC has advised that a timeline of 11-12 weeks from conclusion of the physical inspection to publication of the final report is within expectation.

The CQC commenced its inspection of Medway Hospital Foundation Trust at the end of August 2014. As part of the CQC’s inspection process, once the actual physical inspection has taken place, additional time is taken to analyse the data from the inspection in order to formulate an accurate report on the state of the trust inspected. Once this has been done, recommendations can be made regarding any required improvements.

In the case of the Medway Hospital Foundation Trust, the CQC followed up on previous improvements made since an inspection in July 2014 and continued to have regular meetings with the Trust, Monitor and NHS England to ensure necessary action was taken in order to implement recommended improvements. Once this work was completed, the report was finalised and published.