23 November 2012: The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has today published its most comprehensive ‘State of Care’ report. The report examines all care sectors for the first time and explores why some care services are failing to meet CQC standards.
The Press Release accompanying the report states: “…The report notes many examples of organisations that meet these challenges and deliver an excellent quality of care. But CQC’s inspectors on the ground also see others across both health and social care that are failing to manage the impact of these challenges effectively, and delivering care that is task-based, not person-centred. CQC’s Chief Executive David Behan says that this is unacceptable.
The report concludes that in some areas staffing and skill mix issues, combined with the need to care for people with increasingly complex conditions, are beginning to affect the quality of care being delivered, with a particular impact on the dignity and respect of people.
Where services fail, CQC has found three common factors which contribute to the poor quality of services:- Providers who try to manage with high vacancy rates or the wrong mix of skills; An attitude to care that is ‘task-based’, not person-centred; A care culture in which the unacceptable becomes the norm.
The report focuses on whether people receiving care – in the NHS, independent health care or adult social care – are treated with respect and dignity. Of the 350 inspections of NHS hospital services CQC carried out in 2011/12, 1 in 10 did not meet the standard on respecting and involving people in their care (equates to 35 inspections). In social care, 15% of the 2,502 inspections of nursing homes found a lack of respectful care (equates to 375 inspections).
Ensuring there are enough staff to provide a good service is a significant issue in many services. Of the 2,031 nursing homesCQC inspected, 23% (equates to 467 inspections) were not meeting the CQC standard of having adequate staffing levels, whilst 16% (equates to 603 inspections) of the 3,771 residential care homes CQC inspected were not meeting the same CQC standard. In the NHS, 16% of 250 inspections of hospital services (equates to 40 inspections) failed to meet the standard.
The increased pressures on care providers are also impacting on CQC standards – such as record-keeping and the management of medicines – that can be tell-tale signs of possible future problems of poor care.”
Please follow these links to the CQC’s webpage summarising the report and the report itself in PDF format. Suggestion, when viewing the report, try a search on the criterion ‘learning disability’ to locate statements such as : ‘In CQC’s themed review of learning disability services, only 63% of the 32 care homes inspected as part of the review met
the general standard on care and welfare and only 59% met the standard on safeguarding.’
(Commentators will no doubt point out that the CQC was not without its own problems in the the year 2011/12, and question the quantity and quality of the evidence adduced – in a year when the CQC’s inspection regime was the subject of criticism, and the Winterbourne View scandal occurred.)