This site is intended for health professionals only


CQC completes its first round of GP practice inspections

The CQC has now inspected all practices in England that were registered with the organisation before 1 October 2014.

All adult social care services and GP practices have now been inspected at least once, with more than 8,000 inspections carried out within GP practices.

Data from October showed that 83% of GP practices were rated as good, with 4% outstanding. 3% were rated inadequate.

The CQC had aimed to finish inspecting all GP practices by the end of March, having pushed back its original deadline of September 2016.

The CQC says it is working to ensure all the ‘completed inspections are published in a timely way’. The organisation aims to publish inspection reports within 50 working days after the last visit to the practice, but according to recent board papers, only 60% of reports for primary medical services were published within 50 days in the third quarter of 2016/17.

It comes as the CQC is consulting on plans for massive increases in GP practice fees to make its inspection regime self-funding – however these will be reimbursed in full next year.

The CQC is also planning to reform its intelligent monitoring system imminently, but the GPC has called on them to halt this process due to concerns about how these ‘GP Insight’ reports may be interpreted and concerns it could act as an ‘informal QOF’.