Quality in Health and Social Care | Trends in Regulation

During this event, it was great to hear from our speakers, Chris Day (Director of Engagement at Care Quality Commission (CQC)), Mike Farrar (Former CEO of NHS Confederation), Suzanne Nurse (Deputy Divisional Nursing Director at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust), and Blessing Iroha-Chukwu (CQC Inspector and Special Advisor to Tendable). We explored the future of healthcare regulation in England, and how providers are best placed to work closely with regulators to achieve high-quality care.

During the session we covered:

• How providers should work closely with regulators to highlight areas of outstanding quality as well as improvement.
• The importance of building a culture of trust between regulators and providers.
• Building a dialogue between providers and regulators to achieve a common goal of high-quality care and improved outcomes.

The trends we are seeing in the wider health and care environment impact how providers work with regulators. Chris, Director of Engagement at CQC, talked about how the regulator is changing and reflected on its approach to highlighting areas of outstanding quality as well as improvement.
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CQC is the independent of health and adult social care in England. It exists to help make sure that health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate care, as well as encouraging organisations to improve. As it makes changes to its approach, delivering regulations that keep people safe and support improvement remains at the heart of everything it does.

There are five influencers of quality when it comes to regulation which can contribute to achieving an outstanding rating. These are:

1.  Commissioners and funders: Set the expectations of quality

2. Providers: Foster the culture of quality and maintain the expectations within their organisations

3. Professionals: Who are capable, confident and supported

4. Regulators: Monitor, inspect, rate, act and celebrate providers

5. The public: People who use services and benefit from high quality care

The key question that providers are encouraged to continuously think about is: how do we provide the right support at the right time?

CQC has set out a response to independent reports on how they will drive the improvements needed to rebuild trust in their regulation. A central part of effective regulation is working with providers to make sure there is a system that works for them, while also giving assurance to people who use services about the quality of care that they can expect. CQC will continue to engage with providers and the public as they respond and build on the findings of the reviews by Dr Penny Dash and Professor Sir Mike Richards. Planned changes will help to deliver:

·  A clear and transparent programme of assessment and ratings.

·  Quicker and more effective registration and assessments of providers.

·  Simpler and clearer reports.

CQC shared further steps that they are taking to re-build a trusted approach to their regulation, in order to cement a stronger dialogue with providers.

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On our panel, we also had Suzanne Nurse, Associate Director for Quality Improvement and Clinical Excellence at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals, who talked about her experiences within her organisation with the CQC.

Suzanne Nurse has an extensive background in nursing and has worked with the CQC clinically and operationally within NNUH for a number of years. Coming into her role as associate director means that she is now involved with the co-ordination and support of her front-line users to foster a culture of quality.

Suzanne:

From a CQC perspective, I think Norfolk and Norwich have always had a very rigid relationship with regulators. But over the years, we've built a good relationship and helped them to understand some of our operational pressures within the organisation. When you're dealing with different people that don't really have the expertise and understanding of your service it has been tricky.

In the end, everybody shows up to give safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care when they come to work, but it’s about how we start building confidence in terms of our relationship with the CQC, particularly for our frontline staff.

We have started from an organisation perspective right from the beginning, trying to get our service users and patients involved.

We're all here to learn from each other and deliver the best quality care, and although sometimes it has been complicated to understand what ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ looks like. We're all on the same journey and we all want to deliver good and outstanding care to our patients.

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The key takeaway from this webinar is that quality assurance is everyone's job.

It's vital that organisations work to build a culture of quality and open the lines of communication and build trust between peers. Senior leaders have to become the recipients of honest information, in order for quality to improve in any organisation. Once the process of quality improvement begins to happen, quality assurance will follow.

You can view all the latest updates and the changes that they're making on the Care Quality Commission website: https://www.cqc.org.uk/about-us/improving-how-we-work