A new health and social care “super-regulator” for England is to employ increased powers to keep people better informed about services and ensure that no-one “falls through the cracks”.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) replaces the Healthcare Commission, the Commission for Social Care Inspection and the Mental Health Act Commission.
It will be responsible for registering all NHS and private dentists, mental health trusts, hospitals, GPs and care homes, and make sure that organisations comply with standards.
Says its new chairman, Baroness Young: “Over the next year we are going to have increasing regulation of providers and a very different system for doing it.
“We will have more enforcement powers. For example, we will bring all NHS bodies in for regulation for the first time and measure them against a whole range of quality criteria.
“From 2011/12, the government has agreed in principle that we will bring primary care services, GPs and dentists, under our regulation.
“There is no doubt that the public is interested in the quality of their local GP services.”
Copyright © Press Association 2009
