CQC chief quits ‘with immediate effect’ over care quality scandal
Sir Julian Hartley is stepping down as CQC chief executive ‘with immediate effect’, the watchdog has announced.
In a statement, Sir Julian said that the role ‘had become incompatible’ with ‘conversation about care’ at Leeds Teaching Hospitals trust, where he was chief executive for 10 years.
Earlier this week, the Government announced that there will be an independent inquiry into maternity and neonatal services at the trust following ‘repeated failures’.
CQC chief inspector of mental health Dr Arun Chopra will assume the role of interim chief executive until a permanent successor is appointed.
Sir Julian was appointed CQC chief executive in October last year after major review into the CQC has confirmed ‘significant failings’ in the way the watchdog operated.
Sir Julian said: ‘This has been an incredibly difficult decision. However, I feel that my current role as chief executive of CQC has become incompatible with the important conversations happening about care at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, including during the time I was chief executive there. I am so sorry for the fact that some families suffered harm and loss during this time.
‘I will be giving whatever support I can to the inquiry into maternity services at Leeds, so families get the transparency and answers that they need and deserve – and I want to avoid my connection with the Trust impacting on CQC’s work to rebuild people’s confidence in the regulator.
‘I am hugely proud of what has been achieved since I joined CQC at the end of last year and of the progress we have made in reshaping our culture to become an organisation that listens better to people, to providers and to our own staff – and acts on what we hear.
‘I leave grateful for the part I was able to play and confident that the better approach being built will be owned, and informed, by colleagues, providers and stakeholders with a shared vision.’
CQC chair Professor Sir Mike Richards said: ‘While Sir Julian’s departure will be a huge loss to CQC, I understand his concerns that his previous role at Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust may undermine trust and confidence in CQC’s regulation.
‘I am grateful to him for making this unselfish decision in recognition of the need for the regulator to be visibly held to the highest standards.’
Earlier this year a BBC investigation revealed that the deaths of at least 56 babies and two mothers at Leeds Teaching Hospitals over the past five years ‘may have been prevented’.
Decisions regarding the chair, scope, criteria and terms of reference have yet to be taken, but health secretary Wes Streeting said he would like the inquiry to get underway ‘as soon as possible’.
Meanwhile, the CQC recently announced it will review its IT systems in an effort to speed up inspection times.
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READERS' COMMENTS [7]
Please note, only GPs are permitted to add comments to articles
Seriously, why is this miserable micro focussed organisation still running? Their ability to spot macro failings has been demonstrated to be virtually non-existent repeatedly.
Absolutely agree with above – I think on balance in General Practice they do more HARM than good with extortionate use of public resource. I agree we need some regulation – but I would completely shut them down and start again. PS I am happy to advise as I used to assess practices in the old days and enjoyed it – lol
Echo the above comments & will add I was a GP Spa and a whistleblower to an issue in our PFI building. In both cases my experience was brain numbingly bad.
The CQC could not organise a pixx up in a brewery.
It’s taken them 5 months to look at some paperwork and in the meantime I am unable to legally work doing the job in the same way I have been doing for years ( just without a middle man).
When you phone them it’s like speaking to someone’s mum- nice but clueless. Same paperwork is reviewed by a different administrator each time who refuses to give you their name and do not look at the whole leading to applications being pinged back and forth. What could be sorted in a phone call takes months.
Paper work is over inclusive, pedantic and probably breaches information commissioners guidelines on only asking what you need.
Their website is very difficult to navigate to find what you need. Staff promise to phone you back and don’t. Staff tell you an email has been sent to you and then later say it wasn’t. You literally cannot trust a word they say.
The CQC has enough information on me to steal my entire identity.
And the best thing? It’s really hard to find out how to complain about them. It’s not on their front page when they are so clear that other providers have to have a transparent complaints procedure.
CQC have a bully mentality, and what should be a high trust, low interferance inspection policy, is inadvertantly more invasive than a colonoscopy/
If issues are found, they are more likely to hit you with a stick than work with you to improve and resolve them, and are ridiculously pedantic over achievement levels where even a few missed patients in hundreds are looked at as abject failure, when all attempts to reach and contact and invite patients have been reasonably exhausted.
If a practice is truely failing, then support and help is needed not a system designed to crush them with bureaucracy and red tape.
There is no easy way to complain about unreasonable or heavy handed or frankly wrong CQC reports – where they coppy/pasted the next door practices information in, and failed to realise or admit this error!
Scrap them and make a process and regularot FIT for Purpose.
> After failing to manage the hospital effectively, he’s somehow been appointed as the head of the CQC. What exactly qualifies him to be the chief executive?
Perhaps the BMA could do something useful?
Organising collective action is a traditional activity for trade unions.
A mass refusal to pay CQC fees until the organisation is either abolished or dramatically scaled back?
A mere 10 % refusing would probably be enough.