Excellent leadership is a key feature of what makes care given by GP practices ‘outstanding’ as rated by the CQC, research has shown.
A report released this month by health charity The King’s Fund and commissioned by the CQC sets out five principles for outstanding care, one of which is ’embedding a culture of compassionate and inclusive leadership’ (see also box below).
The study was carried out to help health providers as well as inspectors explain what outstanding care looks like, and be able to more clearly differentiate it from ‘good’ care.
It follows on from the CQC changing its approach to regulation after independent reviews found serious problems with the watchdog. Last month, the organisation released four sector
specific assessment frameworks, one for primary care and community services, that will replace the current Single Assessment Framework.
The King’s Fund researchers reviewed existing literature but also conducted interviews with providers, including GPs, and CQC staff and inspectors, to come up and refine the five principles, which may be used to support CQC’s ongoing work in overhauling its assessment methods.
On leadership, it was found that ‘outstanding care happens when leaders foster an open, psychologically safe, inclusive and values-driven culture that is focused on people who use services and empowers staff.’
The report said: ‘Participants told us that excellent leadership helps to create an environment in which organisational values are shared among staff, fully embedded and continually enacted. In this way, an organisation or service is united and resilient, with staff able to work together to deliver outstanding care’.
Excellent leadership also helps to maintain staff satisfaction and wellbeing and ultimately deliver high-quality care, it added.
And it highlighted that while people talked about different leadership styles and approaches, common to them all was a form of leadership that is flexible and distributed and not always hierarchical.
Overall, The King’s Fund report warned that the principles are not to be used as a description of CQC’s current ‘outstanding’ rating.
It said: ‘Instead, they provide insights into what outstanding care looks like. This can support CQC’s ongoing work on its assessment approach. They are also intended to help provider organisations understand what outstanding care means. As CQC develops its assessment framework, it can decide how and when to use the principles and supporting research. For example, it could explore which regulatory processes or functions they are most relevant to.’
Researchers also concluded that for the principles to meaningfully support CQC’s work on its assessment approach, ‘further testing and refinement will be required to ensure that they align with the revised assessment framework and approach to scoring’.
What are the five principles of outstanding care?
- Delivering truly person-centred care – outstanding care is always highly responsive to individuals’ needs, preferences and aspirations, recognising what is important to people who use services, their strengths, cultures and histories.
- Embedding a culture of compassionate and inclusive leadership – outstanding care happens when leaders foster an open, psychologically safe, inclusive and values-driven culture that is focused on people who use services and empowers staff.
- Prioritising equity and inclusion – outstanding care happens in an environment that is inclusive, prioritises equity and actively embraces diversity among people who use services and staff.
- Continuously integrating learning into practice to drive improvement and innovation – outstanding care happens when a learning mindset is embedded in teams and organisations, with a focus on evolving practice and continuously sharing knowledge.
- Having a purposeful approach to making a positive difference for people who use services – outstanding care comes from a clear and deliberate focus on making a
positive difference for people who use services, staff and the wider system and is evidenced in key outcome measures and feedback from people who use services and staff.
Source: The King’s Fund
See also our blog on the study by one of the co-authors Lillie Wenzel
