The CQC has urged healthcare providers including GP practices to ‘disregard’ scores at evidence category level that currently appear in draft assessment reports.
It has reassured providers that the inclusion of such scores does not indicate a change to their assessment method, but is down IT technical constraints.
Last December, the CQC announced it would no longer score and report findings for providers at evidence category level, and instead only score at quality statement level.
In an update sent last week, the watchdog explained that draft reports do not yet reflect that change, with scores at evidence category level still being presented. These are removed before the final report is published to the public, however.
The issue is down to the fact there is a technical lag and the organisation’s IT system has not developed ‘at the same pace’ as its assessment methods.
The CQC said the system still requires inspectors to assign ‘a nominal score to one evidence category for each quality statement’, in order for a report to be produced.
The score is ‘not a judgement and does not have any influence on quality statement scores,’ its update explained.
This measure is a temporary ‘workaround process’, the inspectorate has added, put in place until the technology can be changed to fully reflect the new assessment method.
It stated: ‘Although the heading for an evidence category and a score will show in the draft report that we send you, this is just a system workaround and you should disregard it.
‘The title and score for evidence categories will not appear in the final published report, as they are not relevant to how we assigned a score to the quality statement and we do not use these evidence category scores for any internal purpose.’
The CQC confirmed to Pulse’s sister title Management in Practice that nothing will change in respect of the assessment process or what practices and other providers are asked to do. There is also no change to the way it aggregates quality statement scores to reach a rating for a key question.
It further explained that it will continue using this ‘workaround’ approach ‘while longer term improvements to its assessment approach and technology are underway’.
The CQC’s chief executive Sir Julian Hartley told MPs earlier this year that around 500 CQC reports were ‘stuck’ in the watchdog’s system and cannot be retrieved due to IT issues.
As of January, there were 14 GP practices whose inspection reports had been delayed for months due to the same IT failures.
A damning review has since revealed that the CQC spent £99m on a transformation programme which has failed to deliver the ‘vast majority’ of expected benefits.
A version of this story was first published on our sister title Management in Practice.
