CQC compliance, inspections and reports

We understand the business-critical nature of CQC compliance and the reputational risks associated with CQC reports/ratings. We also appreciate how frustrating it can be for health and social care providers if they feel that inspection reports or ratings do not fairly reflect their services.

Our CQC team provides organisations with the rapid, tailored advice they need to ensure the best outcomes, from pre-inspection compliance support (e.g. helping Boards prepare for 'well-led' inspections) through to working with organisations in responding to draft inspection reports to help ensure that final published reports are a fair and accurate reflection of the services provided, and ratings are aligned.

How we can help

We provide health and social care organisations across the public and independent sectors with:

• Pre-inspection compliance support - e.g. Head Office pre-inspection reports on key risk areas;
• Mergers/acquisitions due diligence advice on CQC compliance issues for both vendor DD and the buyer or funder;
• Support with factual accuracy check responses to draft inspection reports, including working with in-house teams on which issues to include and how best to evidence them, plus a legal overlay to ensure any inaccuracies and the impact they have on ratings, is identified.  This is a critical phase for providers and requires swift expertise and support; and
• Advice on process flaws which may open the way to judicial review challenge if the factual accuracy process does not resolve the concerns.

Examples of our work

• Re-inspection support for the well-led domain, including advice/mock interviews for Board members and senior managers;
• Head Office CQC compliance advice to independent sector providers, including governance 'health check' and reviews of policies and procedures;
• CQC compliance advice as part of regulatory due diligence projects within numerous transactions, both for vendor and acquirer (including learning disability services, acute independent sector, domiciliary care, primary care out-of-hours services and NHS acute providers);
• Factual accuracy check support within the 10 working day window for both NHS and independent sector providers - including acute, community, specialist services (e.g. oncology and eye care) and mental health services and - for independent sector providers - large groups of acute hospital services, care homes, group-wide family planning and termination services, digital health/remote services, charities and specialist providers;
• Drafting cover letters to go with factual accuracy responses, addressing inaccuracies and the impact on ratings;
• Successful challenges to ratings in draft reports at factual accuracy check stage - e.g. assisting with factual accuracy response which led to a provider's overall rating revised from 'requires improvement' in the draft report to 'good' in the final report, and where 'inadequate' ratings for 3 core services in a draft report were revised to 'requires improvement' in the final report, leaving no 'inadequate' ratings for any services across that organisation; and
• Advising on options regarding publication of an inspection report pending resolution of issues about its content.