The CQC has admitted to being significantly behind on reviews into major issues of concern that have been raised about NHS providers.
It’s leaders have also told MPs that around 500 CQC reports are currently ‘stuck’ in the watchdog’s system and cannot be retrieved due to IT issues.
CQC chief executive Sir Julian Hartley and chair Ian Dilks were questioned by the health and social care committee yesterday, in light of the damning Government-commissioned review by Dr Penny Dash into the regulator published last year.
Sir Julian said that the CQC has a backlog of 5,000 notifications of concern, including provider notifications of ‘major issues and incidents and changes’ as well as notifications of ‘major issues of concern’ from staff and members of the public.
Sir Julian told the committee: ‘We have about 5,000 of those and we receive about 800,000 a year.
‘There’s around 5,000 in that backlog that need working through and that have not been responded to within the 10-day time frame.
‘Those need to be fast-tracked, and they are categorised into different priority levels of urgency, and that is something which we are getting weekly updates on in terms of how quickly we are able to work through those.’
In response Jen Craft, Labour MP for Thurrock, highlighted that there is ‘a potential there for quite significant safeguarding issues’ adding that she could ‘appreciate’ the ‘level of shock’ from committee members.
Sir Julian admitted that some of the concerns raised that haven’t had a response ‘do go back months’, with the oldest cases with ‘no review’ dating back to 30 November 2023, and the oldest cases with ‘no action’ being from 19 August 2024.
The CQC said it will write to the committee ‘to clarify exactly where we are with that’.
In addition, it was heard that IT problems with the new system implemented by the CQC in the last few years have caused staff ‘deep distress’ and ‘a real sense that it was stopping them from doing their jobs’.
Sir Julian also said that problems with the organisation’s new IT platform were identified as the ‘number one reason’ for low productivity, staff stress, low morale and poor wellbeing, with 33% of staff experiencing ‘physical and mental distress’ as a result of the implementation of the system.
Mr Dilks told the committee that there have been instances in which CQC staff have been unable to retrieve their work from the system, an issue affecting about 500 draft reports currently lost in the system.
He said: ‘Just to give you an example of how unbelievable this is, it is possible for staff to start work on a report and put it inside the system, and then get stuck.
‘We have got reports now that go back some months that are stuck inside the system, people cannot get them back out.
‘There is no way on Earth that anyone I’m sure would have designed a system to say “we are going to lose that report in the middle of it”.’
When asked by MPs to explain what this exactly meant and how it happened, Mr Dilks added: ‘I can’t actually sit here and tell you exactly how that happened, I’m just giving an illustration of the sort of difficulties.’
After his appointment as new chief executive last year, Sir Julian commissioned an independent IT expert to look at the issues in the system and produce ‘an urgent review’, which will be considered by the board next month.
Mr Dilks added: ‘We literally just had the findings so it’s too early to comment on that, but clearly one of the things we have to take account of is how do we progress from here.
‘Clearly as part of that there has to be a much greater attention to working with users and make sure that we do not have a repeat of these quite extraordinary system failures.’
In the same session, CQC leaders were also asked if single-word assessments are ‘fit for purpose’, to which Sir Julian said that these will be kept under review.
The scrapping of these has been strongly called for by practice managers and GPs, who think they are unfair and reductive.
Sir Julian said: ‘A major teaching hospital is very different to a GP practice, or a care home – I think single-word ratings do offer a level of clarity and simplicity for the public and that’s certainly something that we’ve got to factor in.
‘I think our priority is to put our house in order on some of those key basics and then keep under review the idea of how we give a single-word or two-word judgment.’
After the committee session, chair of the committee Layla Moran MP said they were shocked to hear how bad things have got at the CQC.
‘We impress upon the CQC that it must work at pace to address the shortfalls identified in the Dash review. We will be closely following what work the regulator does to remediate its current state and restore its credibility,’ she added.
Last year’s Dash review confirmed ‘significant failings’ in the way the watchdog operates and concluded that the CQC had ‘lost its credibility’ within the services and providers it inspects.
However, another review carried out by the CQC itself at the same time, also found that a ‘fundamental reset of the organisation is needed’ and that the regulator ‘will never be able to deliver on its objectives’ if the current structure is maintained.
Since then, the CQC has introduced ‘urgent changes’ to its scoring assessment approach (now only producing scores at quality statement level), to be able to ‘deliver more assessments, at a faster pace’, it said.
Versions of this article were first published by our sister title Pulse
