Care Quality Commission registration process closing in on deadline

Healthcare and adult social care providers have now only two weeks with which to complete their Care Quality Commission registration forms. The regulator believes that this new registration process will prove essential in driving up quality in healthcare, reaching the standards set out in the CQC’s December 2009 publication ‘Essential standards of quality and safety’.

Not all corners of the healthcare community have been completely supportive of the decision against having an automatic transfer between the old system and the new, coming shortly after the CQC adopted its new name (abolishing its Commission for Social Care Inspection identity) and the loss of its chairman Baroness Young, amongst rumours of a clash of personalities with former health secretary Andy Burnham. Since re-registration was announced, however, we now have a new health secretary, Andrew Lansley, representing a Con-Dem Government that has already been busy announcing a number of major healthcare reforms that means the registration is now only one of many healthcare developments the industry will have to come to terms with.

However, the new system means that many businesses will currently be anxious that their registration might not be processed, something not guaranteed in the application procedure. The documentation states that ‘Where a decision has not been reached by 1 October, then the offence of carrying on a regulated activity while unregistered will apply… for such time as a provider remains unregistered,’ with applications that are not submitted on time also at risk of falling into this category.

Even those that are registered will find that they are approved ‘with conditions’, while a Notice of Proposal will be sent to those who have part or all of their application refused, and there will be a 28-day period to submit an action plan, from which time there is no obvious timetable to how long providers may be granted before enforcement action becomes likely.

So far, at least, there has been little indication that the application process itself has not been ‘user-friendly’, as the Commission promised. The decision to demand only one application from care franchises, and any providers with multiple facilities, perhaps being crucial in making life much easier for many.

The CQC’s intention is that, once re-registration is complete, quality standards will be more easily monitored through a ‘more responsive and dynamic system of regulation’, the main difference being a focus on outcomes rather than policies and procedures, making care providers more accountable for results than for methods. There will be a further complication for successfully registered providers who wish to expand into new services or locations, who will now need to apply to ‘vary’ their registration in order to do so.

One of the more ambiguous results of the process is the transformation of the now familiar ‘star process’, and the CQC has not been over-keen on offering any absolutes prior to registration as to whether a Good or an Adequate rating will be the minimum requirement, ‘We are in the process of consulting on the future of the quality rating system,’ even going as far as to refuse a guarantee that current ‘Good’ and ‘Excellent’ rated services will automatically achieve registration, though it is expected that most, if not all, of these services will.

No doubt the industry will soon find out whether the experience has been largely positive or negative for those involved, and the carehome.co.uk news pages will be reporting on any post-registration announcements or complications, from the CQC itself and from the wider media.