 We've published an update on our approach to assessing integrated care systems from April 2023.
Our role
The Health and Care Act 2022 also gives us powers to assess whether integrated care systems are meeting the needs of their local populations. We expect these new powers to start this April. They will enable us to understand how integrated care systems are working to tackle health inequalities and improve outcomes for people. This work will also provide independent and meaningful assurance to the public of the quality of care in their area.
Our approach
April to July 2023
We propose a similar approach to assessing integrated care systems as that outlined for local authority assessment.
For integrated care systems, we will start to form a national view of performance, initially focused on the themes in this quality statement:
This would show whether systems are working together to support people to access the care, support and treatment they need when they need it. It includes how they are responding to inequalities of access across their populations. Our findings will inform our annual 'State of Care' publication.
Going forward from this point, we plan to pilot our approach with some integrated care systems before starting formal assessments. We will carry out further assessments of integrated care systems, taking into account the learning from our pilot approach and our national view of equity in access.
We’re working closely with the Department of Health and Social Care on how we will deliver further assessments beyond this point.
We'll start using our new regulatory approach for individual health and social care providers later in 2023. You can find more detail on the new approach and when it will be implemented on our website.
 We've published a draft version of the assessment framework to enable us to assess how well local authorities are performing against their duties under Part 1 of the Care Act 2014.
We’re sharing this for information and to support local authorities to prepare in the lead-up to 1 April 2023, when we expect to begin our assessments.
We will use a subset of the quality statements from the overall assessment framework. This is because local authorities are being assessed against a different set of statutory duties to registered providers.
To help you get ready for our new regulatory approach being implemented later this year, we’ll use these bulletins to focus on a specific element of the approach. In the third of the series, we’ll focus on changes to our operational teams.
To deliver our new regulatory approach we’ll be making changes to our teams. We’ll let you know when these changes will affect you.
We’ll be working across four geographical areas or ‘networks’. Within these we’ll divide ourselves into local teams made up of;
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Assessors: ensure we have an ongoing view of quality, safety and risk for services in their area. Supported by the inspector and regulatory co-ordinator, they will make judgements about the quality of care. To do this they will consider evidence collected from all sources – both on and off site.
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Inspectors: lead our enforcement activity. While assessors will collect evidence off-site, inspectors will gather evidence on site visits. We call these site visits inspections.
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Regulatory co-ordinators: help carry out engagement with providers and local groups of people.
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Regulatory officers: support administrative duties.
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What does this mean for you?
- Assessed by CQC colleagues who are experts in your service type and better conversations about your local area.
- We'll provide more tailored and efficient support in our relationship with your service.
- We’ll have an up-to-date view of quality and better understanding of what is driving poor or outstanding care supporting improvement.
We'll be moving into these new teams across 2023. For now, there is no impact on how you'll be regulated or who you have contact with at CQC. We'll let you know in advance of these changes impacting you.
Later in 2023 we will implement our new regulatory approach.
Our new approach will give us the ability to make judgements about quality more regularly, instead of only after an inspection as we do today. We’ll use evidence from a variety of sources and look at any number of quality statements to do this.
We’ll continue to describe the quality of care using our 4 ratings: outstanding, good, requires improvement, or inadequate. In forming a view of quality, we use a scoring framework to enable us to make consistent judgements. Our scores will translate into one of the ratings for the key questions (safe, effective, caring, responsive, and well-led). Scores will also be the basis for our view of quality at an overall service level.
At first, we will only publish the ratings, but we also intend to publish the scores in future.
Using scoring as part of our assessments will:
- help us be clearer and more open about how we’ve reached a judgement on quality
- show if a service is close to another rating. For example, for a rating of good the score can show if it’s nearing either outstanding or requires improvement
- help us to see if quality is moving up or down within a rating.
To support this new approach we are changing the way we present reports and ratings on our website. We'd like your feedback on our proposals for these changes, we'll use this feedback to inform further changes.
 CQC user researchers look at how people use websites and systems (like ‘Notify CQC’ or ‘Give Feedback on Care’) so we can improve them. Currently, our focus is on Regulatory Transformation services, and making sure they’ll work for you when released.
Join the 600+ people on our user research panel to hear about upcoming opportunities to share your feedback and have your say on the future of CQC’s services!
Following the departure of two members of CQC's Executive Team in 2022, we've been thinking about how we can best support the organisation as we continue to deliver on our extensive transformation agenda.
In order to do this we'll be making the following changes to our executive team:
Deputy Chief Executive
We have reviewed the Chief Operating Officer role and the job title will now be Deputy Chief Executive. This better reflects the duties and responsibilities of the role, which include the transformation programme, culture change and Quality Improvement across the organisation. This interim position will continue to be held by Kate Terroni.
Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care and Integrated Care
As Kate Terroni focuses more fully on her role as Deputy Chief Executive, we need to make sure that Adult Social Care and integrated care is given the right level of attention and expertise at a senior level. Therefore, we will be recruiting a new Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care and Integrated Care.
Chief Inspector of Health care
This role will merge the previous roles of Chief Inspector of Hospitals and Chief Inspector of Primary Medical Services and Sean O’ Kelly will continue in this position. This reflects the wider changes we’re seeing in how health and social care is delivered, particularly across primary and secondary care. However, we know it is vital that we continue to ensure that the voices of people using services and those working in primary medical services continue to be heard well, so Sean will be supported by his senior leadership team to do this.
 There are ongoing opportunities to shape how CQC works on our digital engagement platform CitizenLab.
Sign up now to access these opportunities when they're available.
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