NHS Confederation calls for suspension to CQC inspections until after winter

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The NHS Confederation has written to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock, to recommend that routine inspections of hospitals and other health and care providers should be paused until after winter. It is believed this is necessary to enable providers to focus on the backlog of treatment that has built up in recent months, as well as address issues like exhaustion among staff, while managing the ongoing threat from coronavirus.
The Health Secretary recently outlined his vision for “busting bureaucracy” and health leaders now want to see this backed up with a major shift towards a lighter-touch and more agile system of regulation over the longer term.
In the latest report from its NHS Reset Campaign the NHS Confederation calls for a continuation of the lighter-touch approach to governance and regulation that has been a feature of COVID-19.  NHS leaders say this has enabled them to focus on delivering care to patients and to work more efficiently, with less interference from national bodies and reduced requirements for meetings and paperwork that add little to patient care. They want to see the lessons from the pandemic embedded and do not want to return to the pre-COVID approach to governance and regulation.
Health leaders know scrutiny is vital, given how critical patient safety is to the delivery of health services. The NHS Confederation believes there will be broad support for comments made earlier this week by Ian Trenholm, Chief Executive of the Care Quality Commission, which outline the regulator’s desire to reduce the burden on providers.
However, they believe the Government will need to go further and take this opportunity to review the regulatory burden placed on providers from NHS England and NHS Improvement and other national bodies, as well as the CQC.

As part of this process duplication must be reduced at NHS England and NHS Improvement regional level and the regulatory framework needs to be reset towards system working and further integration so that it reflects patient pathways. More funding is also needed to maximise the integration of digital technology.

Danny Mortimer, Deputy Chief Executive of the NHS Confederation, says: “Successive governments have promised to cut red tape while actually presiding over and instigating an expansion in the bureaucratic burden on providers. In the immediate term, we need to put this in reverse and suspend routine inspections until after winter, when the lessons from the pandemic can be put into practice.
“Ultimately, we need a more risk-based, proportionate and intelligence-driven approach to regulation that fosters innovation and does not weigh providers down with reporting requirements that take them away from delivering high quality care to patients.”

The report also sets out how local NHS organisations are ready and willing to take on some of the responsibility for reducing bureaucracy themselves. To embed the transformation brought about by the pandemic, they are keen to encourage leaner and lighter governance structures, with fewer committees and shorter and simpler board reporting.

The full letter and more information may be accessed here.



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