The CQC should ‘dramatically’ scale back on practice inspections to reduce pressures pushing GPs into early retirement, the author of a Government-commissioned report into the GP workforce has said.
Professor Martin Roland, University of Cambridge general practice researcher, said he thinks CQC inspections have ‘caused a significant burden’ on practices without ‘a lot of evidence [of] quality improvement’, compounding the GP workforce crisis.
He told Pulse that once all practices are inspected next spring, his recommendation is it inspects only 20% of practices in the following five years.
Professor Roland said he believes that HEE efforts to bring medical students into vocational GP training will mean ’we probably will get the training numbers that are needed’.
However, he added: ’It is a much more pressing problem to work out how to persuade GPs to carry on working into their early 60s and not retiring increasingly in their late 50s’.
He said: ’What I think has caused a significant burden on practices is these CQC visits and I think there is real room to change those radically.
’I think that the burden could be reduced dramatically, because there is not a lot of evidence that CQC visits have produced a lot of quality improvement.
’I would like CQC perhaps to only visit 20% of practices in the next five-year round, so that the burden on the great majority of practices was greatly reduced.’
His comments come as chief inspector of general practice Professor Steve Field told Pulse earlier in the month that he wants to reduce the burden of CQC visits on practices.
