Wes Streeting today issued a special warning against relying on a regulator’s statements about hospitals and nursing homes.
The Health Secretary said a shocking investigation had revealed the Care Quality Commission (CQC) was “rotting” and called some ratings “fabricated”.
In a series of heavy-hitting interviews this morning, Mr Streeting said he was “astonished” to learn that one in five healthcare providers had never been assessed, while some hospitals, GP surgeries and care homes had not been checked for a decade.
Mr Streeting said there was evidence that some of the assessments were “in fact fabricated and concocted using partial insights and inspections combined with historical assessments and judgements”.
He said there were ‘people going into care homes with no experience of common conditions like dementia and no way of making a judgement about the quality of care, and people going into hospitals with no experience of actually providing care in a hospital’.
The CQC says it ensures health and social care services in England provide people with “safe, effective, compassionate and high-quality care” by monitoring and inspecting their work.
But Dr Penny Dash’s independent review found that less than half the number of inspections were carried out last year than in 2019/20.
Those carrying out the inspections also have a worrying lack of experience. Some inspectors said they had never been to a hospital before, and one inspector who visited care homes had never met a person with dementia.
Wes Streeting (pictured) has called the CQC regulator ‘not fit for purpose’
The Health Secretary said he was ‘astonished’ to learn that one in five care providers has never received a rating from the Care Quality Commission (file image)
Dr Dash, chair of the North West London Integrated Care Board, was commissioned to conduct the inquiry by former Health Secretary Victoria Atkins in May.
Mr Streeting commissioned an interim report, saying urgent action was needed to improve regulation and ensure transparency.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he said he was “shocked” by what had been found.
“First of all, honesty is the best policy. That’s why I quickly published the interim findings. There are assessments that are being reviewed today and I don’t have confidence in them. I don’t think the public can have confidence in them,” he said.
‘I have urged the CQC to create transparency around these ratings so that people can see how these ratings have been arrived at and whether they are a true, fair and accurate representation of the quality of care.
‘Leadership is essential. We need a new permanent chief executive at the Care Quality Commission and a new chief inspector of hospitals who we can work with to turn the regulator around.’
He added: ‘I never expected to be told that one in five care providers had not been rated, that some care providers had not been inspected for a decade, that some of those ratings were in fact fabricated and concocted based on partial views and inspections combined with historical assessments and judgements.
“I am completely shocked.”
Mr Streeting said there were ‘brilliant people working in the NHS and social care, but we can’t pretend there isn’t also a huge amount of failings’.
“It is unacceptable that the heart of the CQC has become so rotten,” he said.
“We will not tolerate this, we will take the necessary measures to implement the radical reforms that this organization needs.”
Mr Streeting said members of the public who check ratings on the CQC website should “take them with a pinch of salt”.
But he denied that funding was the problem. Mr Streeting said: ‘I don’t think money is the problem. I think it’s culture.’
He said the organisation needed “radical reform” and wanted to make it clear to potential candidates how big the challenge was as he recruited a new permanent chief inspector of hospitals for the CQC.
He said: ‘When I joined the department it was already clear that the NHS was broken and the social care system was in crisis.
Mr Streeting said there was evidence that some of the assessments were ‘effectively fabricated and concocted using partial representations and inspections combined with historical assessments and judgements’ (file image)
Experts have previously raised concerns that the CQC failed to expose wrongdoing at trusts that later became embroiled in major scandals.
The Dash investigation revealed “significant internal deficiencies” that make it difficult to identify poor performance.
These included too few inspections, a lack of clinical expertise among inspectors, a lack of consistency in assessments and problems with the CQC’s IT system.
Dr Dash said: ‘The contents of my interim report underline the urgent need for comprehensive reform within the CQC.’
Mr Streeting said the government would now take immediate steps to restore public confidence in the regulator. These include increased oversight, greater transparency in how the regulator determines its assessment of providers and a review of assessment frameworks.
Dr. Dash will publish her full report in the fall.
