Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he plans to take to ensure that the Care Quality Commission publishes more of its inspection reports on time.

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 assessing whether providers are meeting the levels of safety and quality, including the decisions of when to publish inspection reports.

The CQC has provided the following information:

The CQC Business Plan for 2015/16 sets out Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to be used to monitor progress and to improve reporting to its Board and to the public. These KPIs include an aim to publish inspection reports within 50 days of an inspection. This timeframe has been extended to 65 days for hospitals so as to accommodate the extensive nature of the post-inspection process, although this is not included in the Business Plan as it is exclusive to the hospitals directorate.

Since the introduction of the new approach inspections in 2014, CQC has continued to refine the process around the publication of inspection reports. Processes have been developed to reduce the numbers of checks applied to each report as staff have become more familiar with the new methodology. There has been increased training and support for staff to fully embed the new inspection methodology and extensive inspector recruitment to fill staff vacancies. Reports are also subject to factual accuracy checks and rigorously quality assured prior to publication.

Other processes put in place by CQC to improve timely publication of reports include:

- The establishment of quality action groups to address any performance issues.

- Provision of initial feedback to providers at the conclusion of a planned inspection with the initiation of any required enforcement action shortly afterwards. This ensures that any action can be taken by the provider without having to wait for the final report to be published.

- Acceleration in the production of urgent reports for services identified as higher risk straight to National Panel for a final decision prior to publication.

The quality of the inspection and the report is CQC’s key priority and CQC will continue to refine processes where necessary to ensure continued improvements in the timeliness of the inspection report publication.