 It has come to our attention that there is some misunderstanding about the rights of private patients to take a complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) for independent third stage review. Only NHS-funded patients have the right to take their complaint to the PHSO under the NHS Constitution. Those receiving care or treatment within a private patient unit (PPU) run by an NHS trust, who are not satisfied with the outcome of a complaint that has exhausted the trust’s internal complaints process, do not have the right to take their complaint to the PHSO.
Further information can be found under our guidance on Regulation 16: Receiving and acting on complaints.
 We want to introduce a change to registration which will strengthen our ability to assess proposed services for people with a learning disability and autistic people against Right support, Right Care, Right Culture before the provision of specialist care, support or treatment commences.
Please take a few minutes to read our proposal and complete a short survey on our survey platform CitizenLab.
In her new blog, Victoria Vallance our Director of Secondary and Specialist Care discusses the work we have been doing to make maternity services safer.
This has involved discussions with front line staff to get their views on what they think needs to change. She also discusses our maternity inspection programme going forward.
Our Chief Digital Officer, Mark Sutton, has written a blog that discusses how we have used all things technology, data and insight, in the year since we launched our strategy. He also looks ahead to our new regulatory framework and the exciting launch of our new provider portal.
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Under the Health and Care Act, we have new responsibilities relating to the reviewing and assessing local authorities and integrated care systems.
We have been engaging on our approach to system oversight and have received some valuable insight which has informed our methodology. We're keen to ensure as many people as possible have had the chance to comment on our approach. We're currently running a series of activities on our online participation platform, which is your opportunity to help shape our approach to this new area of regulation.
All activities are open until 14 August.
 We are aware that concerns have been raised about CQCs regulatory approach to the use of the “Advice and Guidance” pathway (a mechanism for GPs to be able to access secondary care for advice and guidance from specialist colleagues). This has been introduced across the NHS.
It is welcomed that there are formal lines of communication between GPs and hospital specialists in order to support and facilitate the timely delivery of safe and effective care for patients. From a regulatory perspective there have been questions posed as to where any regulatory activity may be occurring and who is responsible for it.
The Care Quality Commission consider Advice and Guidance as being part of the regulated activity (Treatment of Disease Disorder and Injury) of each party involved. For General Practice this relates to the appropriate information being provided when requesting advice and for a Hospital Trust to provide an effective system to respond with appropriate advice. The individual professionals involved have a duty to deliver appropriate contributions to the process.
We will continue to work with NHSE to help to focus on this pathway to support the safe and effective delivery of patient care.
The Equality and Human Rights commission have published a report into the treatment and experiences of lower-paid ethnic minority workers in health and social care, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This report also covers the following areas:
- the numbers of hours worked
- workplace policies, procedures and culture
- the tasks allocated
- the ability of workers to access redress
- training and development opportunities
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