Inspection reports for 14 GP practices have been delayed by months due to IT failures, the CQC has confirmed, following instances in which assessments were ‘lost’ within the system.
The watchdog’s chief executive Sir Julian Hartley told MPs last month that about 500 CQC reports were ‘stuck’ in the CQC’s system and could not be retrieved due to IT issues.
Now the CQC has confirmed to our sister publication Pulse that the number quoted by Sir Julian referred to 350 assessments that had been initiated in the system prior to July 2024 and a further 150 that had progressed to a later stage but were delayed between July and October 2024.
It also confirmed that as of 21 January there were 14 reports for GP providers within the system who had had a site visit over 120 days ago, and which had not been published. The CQC would normally publish a report within 50 days of the inspection.
GPs have said that delays with the reports have caused problems for their practices, for example, making it more difficult to recruit staff.
The delays were highlighted by two reviews of the CQC last year, which described the regulatory platform and provider portal used by the watchdog as ‘functioning poorly’ and ‘contributing to major delays in report publication’.
The CQC said that the impact of ‘poorly performing’ technology and delays to report publication have been ‘widely’ discussed with providers.
Last November, the watchdog published an update on its website explaining that technical issues were delaying assessment reports but that there were ‘direct’ conversations taking place with trade associations and providers who had flagged concerns about the timeliness of their report.
But GP partner Dr Jamie Green, whose practice in Northampton waited over six months to receive a report following a reinspection, said that they were never given a formal explanation for the delay, which he described as ‘unacceptable’ and ‘harmful’.
The practice was reinspected in June last year after being rated ‘inadequate’ in 2023. But a new provisional report, which rated them as ‘good’, was only received last month.
Dr Green said: ‘There was quite a bit of chasing. We went to the ICB, and they said “you need to go back to the inspector”. I think we called the helpline for CQC.
‘They never turned around to us at any point and said “there’s an IT issue with your report, that’s why you’ve not received it”.
‘All we’ve ever heard is it will be received “by the end of the week”. In fact, we’ve not actually received a formal confirmation that the reason we didn’t get our report was because of IT issues.’
Dr Green added that there were ‘significant’ issues with having an inadequate rating ‘just sitting on your report’ due to the delay from the CQC.
The practice’s application to become a Yellow Fever Centre was rejected ‘on the basis of the previous CQC rating’, he said, and nurse vacancies remained unfilled ‘as interviewees have cited concerns about our CQC rating’.
Dr Green added: ‘I’m a GP trainer, I had to have a conversation with the GP dean around whether or not we’d be able to continue to train GP trainees.
‘We had a couple of nurses say they didn’t want to join the practice. They were interviewed and then found out our CQC rating.’
A CQC spokesperson told Pulse: ‘Our technical team are working with operational teams to progress these reports and we are also looking at system updates which will resolve some of the issues leading to delays in publication.
‘The amount of time taken to publish some reports falls far short of what people using services and providers should be able to expect and we have apologised for this and are taking urgent action to ensure we can publish inspection reports much more quickly.
‘It is important to note that while the publication of some reports has been delayed, any immediate action that CQC have needed to take to protect people using services has not been affected.’
Last month, Sir Julian also admitted 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 publi
A version of this article was first published by our sister title Pulse
