Changes to the Care Quality Commission and evidence reporting

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) will be making changes to how organisations will be assessed. To meet those changes, the Trust is introducing a new way of gathering evidence and reporting.

The Trust will now be using Health Assure, an online governance, risk and compliance solution to report against service delivery requirements, as well as other areas such as infection, prevention and control, safeguarding and medicines management.

Health Assure will also give the Trust a number of dashboards which will drill down to locality level in terms of CQC compliance and provide the Trust with an overall compliance dashboard.

The Trust will need to meet new key lines of enquiry, which are replacing the outcomes the CQC measure their essential standards against. These are: 

• Is it safe?
• Is it effective?
• Is it caring?
• Is it responsive to people’s needs?
• Is it well-led?

These will be underpinned by a number of indicators which are currently in development for ambulance services and are planned to be in place from January 2015.

As well as the CQC portfolio, Health Assure will also be used for the management of NICE guidance and information relating to the Equality and Diversity System (EDS), both of which link in with the CQC.