Norman Lamb – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-04-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of primary care inspections by the Care Quality Commission on improving clinical outcomes for patients.

Ben Gummer

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care providers in England. It is responsible for assessing whether providers are meeting the fundamental standards below which care should not fall.

The CQC has provided the following information.

As of 31 March 2016, 3,281 general practitioner (GP) practices had received at least one overall published rating from the CQC. Of these, 4% are rated outstanding, 83% are rated good, 10% are rated requires improvement and 3% are rated inadequate. In addition to each overall rating, each practice also receives ratings for each of the CQC’s five key questions, is the service safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led set out above. This set of ratings for each practice, along with the overall rating provide a strong basis for improving clinical outcomes by highlighting where care is already good and where improvement is required.

106 GP practices have been re-inspected following an overall rating of requires improvement or inadequate. Of these locations, 81 have had an improvement in their overall rating following re-inspection.

There have been 153 GP practices / Out of Hours services placed into special measures. Subsequently, 43 have exited special measures and the majority of locations placed in special measures that have been re-inspected, have improved. At present 84% have improved, with over half of those improving moving up two categories to an overall good rating. Where the CQC has found unacceptably poor care, patients have been protected with a total of 16 de-registrations to date.