Care regulator announces plans for a new pilot to reveal picture of care across local areas

A new pilot project has been launched by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to obtain a picture of the different range of health and social care services available to families within a local area.

The project titled ‘Quality of Care in a Place’ will take place in Greater Manchester, whilst taking an in-depth look at Salford and Tameside, North Lincolnshire, testing how well co-ordinated local health and social care services are.

Chief inspector of General Practice and Integrated Care, Professor Steve Field, said: “One of the most important things we can do as a regulator is to be clear and transparent about the picture of health and social care.

“We already know what a valuable source of information our published reports with ratings are for members of the public. Our new ‘Quality of Care in a Place’ pilot is really about increasing that level of openness even further by building a picture of what the whole quality of care is like for people living in a particular area – including how well services are co-ordinated.

“As well as identifying any issues that need to be tackled across different organisations and finding out more about health inequalities, we will also use the pilot to highlight examples of good practice that other areas can learn from.”

Professor Field added: “I’m really pleased we are able to start testing out such an important piece of work that could also tell us more about what impact key issues such as quality of leadership and commissioning have on the quality of care across a local area.”

Using the results of CQC inspections and information from other local and national organisations, the project will be used to assess whether collaborating information on the quality of care provided within a whole place, can help health and social care providers to improve the services they offer. In addition, it is hoped the pilot will provide people with information on how their local services collaborate.

‘Quality of Care in a Place’ will focus on the experiences of older people and those needing mental health care, analysing different groups within local populations to build a greater picture of health care systems already in place.

The findings from the pilot will become part of the regulator’s strategy for the next five years, which is currently in development.