- Get yourself organised by allocating time to do the job and making sure key members of staff will be available to assist at that time
- Prepare yourself as to what do you need to do for CQC. Read the regulations, get toolkits to help (BMA has a very good toolkit, see the Resources section if you haven't already got this).
- Prepare GP partners for CQC
- What expenditure they might have to authorise for tools or staff
- How this is to be enforced – You need their absolute authority and support to tell staff what to do. This is now a fundamental part of your job and you will have to be prepared to issue warnings to non-cooperating staff.
- Make sure they understand that they are now personally liable for registration, even though a manager might be doing the legwork.
- They are aware of the penalties and criminal liability for non-compliance
- Prep your staff about the registration and new requirements
- Work out a time table for implementation
- If you have bought a complete set of tools to do this, it should take you 2-3 months to get everything done
- If you are designing everything yourself, this will depend on how well organised you are already. Allow 1-2 months to bring your systems up to scratch and 2-3 months to implement.
An alternative method of organising
A good way of working your way through is to concentrate on high risk items first and work your way through to lower risk items. This way, if you do not have time to get everything ready by the deadline, whatever is left to do is relatively low risk and does not reflect on your application too badly.
We recommend this method, and the sequence you could adopt is:-
- Premises
- Equipment
- Fire and environment
- Staff Management
- Patients - Outcomes
- Corporate governance