Home care, nursing home and care home experts discuss compliance with the Care Quality Commission’s new guidance

Experts decode what the Care Quality Commission’s 275-page document on meeting new standards means for residential and domiciliary care providers and adult placements. Since 2008 registered providers have received a quality rating (zero to three stars), with poorer performers receiving more inspections. Efforts have also been made to assess providers on the basis of outcomes for users rather than processes. However, progress has been limited by the national minimum standards, which have long been criticised as too process-based.

These standards will be scrapped this year, as Health and Social Care Act 2008 regulations come into force that will make assessments more outcome-focused. Adult care providers must register with the Care Quality Commission under the new system by October. In doing so they will have to show they meet standards for compliance with the regulations, which were issued by the CQC last month and directly replace the standards.

Working out how to comply will involve managers wading through a 279-page document covering 28 separate outcomes in six key areas as follows:

• user involvement and information,
• personalised care,
• safeguarding,
• staff suitability,
• quality and management, and;
• management suitability.

Sixteen of the outcomes apply to all health and social care providers. The other 12 apply to different types of provider. Provider umbrella bodies advise that services will have to produce much more evidence of self-assessment than in the past. The CQC could respond to a failure to comply by further inspection or enforcement action such as placing conditions on registration, fines and cancelling registration.

Further reading and guidance