CQC have published a letter alongside the Care Care Provider Alliance, Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement, asking for providers to submit daily information to them. This Action Card summarises what they have said and what you need to do. You can now download the action card here.
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Alternatively, you can see the summary here:
A) Why are CQC asking for Information?
We all know that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that things are changing constantly and quickly. CQC as regulators of care and health have information about every registered service. This puts them in a unique and great position to support the sector to tackle the outbreaks and help co-ordinate a response. To do it well they need information from providers and not just the information you provide in notifications or your PIR. They want to make sure that when you and your staff are so busy that they information they ask for is going to used to help and not add pressure to what is already a stressful situation. The idea is that you will only be information once. If you haven’t signed up for CQC newsletters , they aren’t always updating their website so it’s a good idea to sign up for their newsletters to your email inbox.
note: Your daily responses to the CQC Update and Capacity Tracker will ensure CQC have a true understanding of the challenges being faced and can respond. Targeting the right resource, in the right place, at the right time will save lives.’ CQC- 17 April
B) What action do you need to take?
In a joint letter on 17TH April from Care Provider Alliance, Care Quality Commission, Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement they have said the following.
- You will get the support you need and that local authorities and Local Resilience Forums (LRF) have the intelligence they need to ensure business continuity and to make business critical decisions.
- Residential and nursing homes to complete only the NHS Capacity Tracker as set out in Coronavirus (COVID-19): admission and care of people in care homes
- Homecare providers to complete CQC’s ‘Update CQC on the impact of COVID’ online form (from Monday 13 April).
- This will be rolled out to Shared Lives services, Extra Care and Supporting Living services soon and CQC will be in contact with them directly when the service is available to them
- If you are a provider of both homecare and residential and/or nursing homes, you need to complete both data collections.
- If you provide this information daily, via the appropriate route, local authorities, CCGs and other local bodies will receive that data. This means they will not need to make the same request and should not be contacting individual homes or services for this data.