About the Essential Standards
The 28 Essential standards guidance published by the CQC came under criticism not only from the Health Committee, but also from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee and from within the CQC's own board.
In the report published on 09 January 2013 "The Committee concluded that the CQC's primary focus should be on ensuring that the essential standards it enforces can be interpreted by the public as a guarantee of acceptable standards in care. We do not believe that the CQC's essential standards in their current form succeed in this objective."
Commenting on the Health Select Committee report, Chief Executive David Behan has outlined CQC's "intentions to tailor the way we regulate different types of organisations based on what has the most impact on driving improvement." He continued that, "We have already begun to make some of these changes and will continue this process."
In fact, the actual Regulations are quite straightforward in that they specify what you should comply with and do not refer to the requirements in terms of outcomes.
The CQC is required to produce guidelines to help providers understand the regulations. What the CQC has attempted to do is produce a definitive document combining the Registration Act with the Regulations, and the result is the 278 page document titled "Care Quality Commission - Guidance about compliance".
The CQC believes that the process should be outcomes orientated and has reordered the various paragraphs of the regulations as outcomes 1 to 28.
Here are some problems with these guidelines:
- Most providers find it a very difficult read because of the bureaucratic language used
- It introduces the concept of "prompts" which have no legal basis, but will nevertheless be used to judge compliance
- The same prompts may appear under several Outcomes, so presenting evidence in the same sequence as the Outcomes becomes problematic
- Compliance with CQC does not mean you are compliant with everything. The guidelines have some glaring omissions and also state that they are not intended to cover everything.
In these sections, we have tried to simplify the meaning of the Outcomes.
The 16 core Essential Outcomes are:
- Outcome 1: Respecting and involving patients
- Outcome 2: Consent to care and treatment
- Outcome 4: Care and welfare of patients
- Outcome 5: Meeting nutritional needs
- Outcome 6: Cooperating with other providers
- Outcome 7: Safeguarding users from abuse
- Outcome 8: Cleanliness and infection control
- Outcome 9: Management of medicines
- Outcome 10: Safety and suitability of premises
- Outcome 11: Safety, availability and suitability of equipment
- Outcome 12: Requirements relating to workers
- Outcome 13: Staffing
- Outcome 14: Supporting workers
- Outcome 16: Assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision
- Outcome 17: Complaints
- Outcome 21: Records
The other 12 outcomes relate more to the routine day-to-day management of a service. They are:
- Outcome 3: Fees
- Outcome 15: Statement of purpose
- Outcome 18: Notification of death of a person who uses services
- Outcome 19: Notification of death or unauthorised absence of a person who is detained or liable to be detained under the Mental Health Act
- Outcome 20: Notification of other incidents
- Outcome 22: Requirements where the service provider is an individual or partnership
- Outcome 23: Requirement where the service provider is a body other than a partnership
- Outcome 24: Requirements relating to registered managers
- Outcome 25: Registered person: training
- Outcome 26: Financial position
- Outcome 27: Notifications – notice of absence
- Outcome 28: Notifications – notice of changes
Whilst these standards are being referred to as "non-core", do remember that compliance with these standards is a legal requirement
(To print a Quick Guide to the 28 outcomes click on the icon
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