The CQC will begin piloting its new primary care assessment framework next month, with inspectors using interim Word‑based templates while digital systems are developed.
The watchdog is planning an ‘initial sample’ of 40 inspections beginning in June, and the pilot will continue over the summer and autumn.
Inspectors will be using Word templates instead of an electronic system, with ‘digital development happening in parallel’.
Once the new digital systems are built, they’ll be ‘refined and further tested ahead of final rollout’, the CQC’s deputy director of policy said.
It comes after IT problems with previous systems implemented by the CQC in the last few years caused staff ‘deep distress’, with 500 CQC reports ‘stuck’ in the watchdog’s system and unable to be retrieved due to IT issues.
An independent review of the CQC’s IT issues was then launched and found that the watchdog had spent £99m on a ‘failed’ transformation programme. It highlighted technical issues with the way the regulatory platform and provider portal functioned, including an ‘overly complex assessment process’ and ‘poor user experience in registration’.
Last month, the CQC revealed the new draft framework for assessing GP practices, including expectations for providers to use artificial intelligence (AI) and take responsibility for patients’ ‘transition’ to secondary care.
The proposed primary care and community services framework said that GP practices will be judged on how well they transition patients between services, with a focus on continuity of care and plans ‘coproduced’ with patients.
It is one of four sector-specific assessments, which will all be piloted from June and replace the ‘single assessment framework’ that the watchdog currently uses for all providers.
The overhaul follows two damning reviews of the regulator published in 2024, which said its ‘significant failings’ had led to ‘a substantial loss of credibility’.
In a webinar on the new framework last week, CQC deputy director of policy Matthew Tait said: ‘We’re planning on an initial sample of 40 inspections beginning in June. We’re working on getting those set up using primarily existing, planned inspections that will be coming up over that period.
‘We’ll be piloting throughout the summer and building that into the evaluation approach. There’ll be digital development happening in parallel and built flexibly to accommodate what we’re going to be piloting. But then once those digital systems are built, they’ll be refined and further tested ahead of final rollout.’
CQC chief inspector of hospitals Dr Toli Onon said: ‘We have made plans for piloting over the summer and autumn, and we’re going to start with a range of services across all four sectors.
‘Initially we’re going to pilot not in an electronic system, but in Word templates to just look at how the framework would work in parallel with our existing inspections.’
She added that no provider will ‘suddenly have a pilot arrive on the doorstep’. She said: ‘We will confirm with the providers that they’re comfortable to be included in the piloting program, and if they’re not, there won’t be.
‘But the aim is to do it in parallel with our inspections, and then to use the application of the framework to get that feedback to help us design the underpinning digital system for it.
‘Work’s already going on with the digital systems, but the refinement of that will need what we get from the pilot. That will be the first phase of our piloting, and then we will have subsequent piloting later on.’
The CQC also said that it is implementing its ‘return to Good’ programme, in which inspectors use ‘a shorter, sharper version of the assessment framework’, if their data suggests that a provider has ‘probably remained at Good’ and they can do a ‘quicker inspection’ to secure Good rating in a new inspection.
However, if inspectors see ‘something they have concerns about’ when doing this shorter inspections they can open up a full inspection.
The watchdog said that GPs have until 12 June to give their views on the new assessment framework by responding to a survey.
For all frameworks, the regulator has said it will retain the ‘five key questions’ on which assessments are based, as well as overall single-word ratings, but it will replace numerical scoring with rating judgements and reintroduce ‘key lines of enquiry’ (KLOEs).
A version of this story first appeared on our sister title Pulse.
