There is no set date for routine CQC inspections of GP practices to return, the CQC has said.
The continued pause to routine inspections was confirmed as NHS England set out measures to reduce the burden on GPs and allow them to focus on the expanded Covid booster programme today.
This includes suspending and income-protecting parts of QOF until April 2022.
NHS England’s letter to GP practices said: ‘The CQC have confirmed that routine inspections of practices will continue to be paused, and only risk-based assessment will be undertaken, where deemed critical to safety and quality.’
A CQC spokesperson told Pulse: ‘Routine inspections were paused in March 2020 and that continues to be the case – we remain sensitive to the pressures faced by GPs and practice teams and there is no set end date.’
NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard first said on Tuesday that the CQC had agreed to continue to pause GP practice inspections, and that the Government was looking at ‘cutting other burdens’ for GPs.
At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year, the CQC paused its routine inspections to focus on activity where there was a serious risk to people’s safety.
However inspections resumed in April for GP services which had previously been identified as breaching regulations.
The CQC recently signalled that on-site CQC inspections for outstanding practices would not return for the ‘foreseeable future’.
READERS' COMMENTS [3]
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The whole narrative of this is wrong. There maintains a persecutory, monitoring and distrustful air. A shadow – that thinks that it is doing you a favour. You don’t trust doctors – just say it. You want to intelligently monitor them, but cannot see any white light in the good work they try to do in a really crap system. But you trust politicians and the companies. The people that created your jobs. It all just smells off still, after more than 169,020 are dead – it is the GP surgery’s fault. That number would be half a million if it wasn’t for them stepping up and some of them being sadly killed off. How many politicians died? How many politicians were found to be corrupt, liars and blatantly negligent? This is all paraded around, like you’re being done a favour. No other country in the world dishes out such covert and unsupported scrutiny and humiliation upon the Primary care workforce for a FREE service, to a beleaguered society full of woes and fragility in the entire Western world.
CQC inspection paused – however those practices that were struggling before COVID will be tormented and judged on the unlevel playing field that other practices are excused inspection from.
Instead of CQC going in to hammer those practices, the resources and funding should be sent in to level up the struggling practices, help them with understaffed problems and give them extra help.
Just a thought on how to do thngs differently and maybe make the world a better place.
I hope those in positionz of influence who float around this site take notice and push the above idea and get it implemented.
Just to say none of this shite up in Scotland, jobs to be had.
😁