Download our CQC General Practice Update here. It includes: CQC to Return to Inspecting GP Practices and CQC COVID-19 Insight Reports.
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A) CQC to Return to Inspecting GP Practices
The CQC announced in March that they would pause routine inspections during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. However, they have used an additional monitoring tool – the Emergency Support Framework (ESF) to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on staff and people using services and identify where they may need to inspect, or escalate concerns to partner organisations. As a result, they have continued to inspect providers in response to risk and concerns raised, and services have remained subject to close monitoring using a range of intelligence sources.
During the pandemic there has been an increase in calls to CQC’s national contact centre from staff raising concerns about care and the biggest increase has come from staff in the adult social care sector. Although calls often covered multiple topics, many of the calls (26%) related to lack of PPE or other infection control products. 32% of calls included concerns about how infection control or social distancing was being practiced at the service they worked in and 4% of calls referred to quality of care being impacted by COVID-19.
In Primary Medical Services, 3 inspections have been conducted since the cessation of routine inspections on 16 March, all of which were as a result of concerns raised by staff or members of the public.
CQC Inspectors are scheduling inspections of higher risk services to take place over the summer, and this week they announced that they will be adapting the ESF tool to be used alongside responsive visits and a managed return to routine inspection of lower risk services in the autumn.
B) CQC COVID-19 Insight Reports
In May, the CQC published the first of a regular series of insight documents intended to highlight COVID-19 related pressures on the sectors that CQC regulates. It looked at adult social care and the impact of the pandemic on staff wellbeing and the financial viability of services.
In the second edition of the COVID-19 Insight report Chapter 3 focusses on Primary Care, looking at the changing face of GP and online primary care services which includes:
- What the CQC has heard from primary care services about how things have been working during the pandemic
- The number – and type – of GP appointments taking place
- Changes in the use of the NHS 111 service