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CQC set to appoint deputy chief inspectors of general practice

The CQC is set to appoint four new deputy chief inspector of GP practices in England to support chief inspector Professor Steve Field, it has announced.

The regulator is currently considering applications for the roles, and candidates are likely to be interviewed next month.

 ‘Adverts have been placed and applicants are being shortlisted for the four new deputy chief inspector roles,’ said Dr Field in a CQC public board meeting paper.

The regulator has also said it will publish a summary of its findings next month from the 700 inspections of GP surgeries it has carried out in England since April.

The board paper revealed that inspections of 28 GP out-of-hours providers will take place between January and March next year.

Professor Field is in the process of developing a system for monitoring, inspecting and regulating primary care dental practice, which will come into effect next April. This was first outlined in the regulator’s A new start consultation document earlier this summer.

The new strategy will see the CQC take a more targeted approach; unless specific concerns have been raised, only a sample of practices will be inspected.

He told Pulse last month: ‘From April, we will come and look at a CCG and sample a proportion of the practices in the CCG over a week or two.’

Professor Field also said that inspections had found some areas where GPs are not achieving the minimum standards set by the CQC.

He said: ‘We found issues of safeguarding. There were out-of-date drugs, people who were not recording the temperatures of fridges that hold vaccines, surgeries without doors to their consulting rooms, dirty rooms and carpets in treatment rooms. Things that are not acceptable.’