Health and care regulator consults on changes to assessment process

The proposed changes fall into two main areas: developing frameworks and guidance for assessing providers; and improving how the CQC assesses and rates providers.

Developing frameworks and guidance for assessing providers

Re-introducing rating characteristics
These are clear descriptions of what each rating level (such as good or requires improvement) looks like in practice. They will help to provide a better understanding of what each rating means.
Replacing quality statements with assessment questions
These questions will be similar to the previous key lines of enquiry (KLOEs) and will support the rating characteristics by guiding how we assess quality.
Developing sector-specific frameworks
These will include detailed content and guidance tailored to a specific health or care sector, so providers can better understand our expectations for their sector, as well as consistent core content that would be included across all frameworks.
Simplifying the content of the frameworks
We’ll remove duplicate or overlapping content and make the language clearer and easier to apply in practice.

Improving how the CQC assesses and rates providers

The CQC is also proposing changes to simplify how it makes judgements and awards ratings, including strengthening the role of professional judgement.

Making judgements at the key question level
We propose to make judgements directly at the key question level with reference to the rating characteristics. We will no longer award lower-level scores to drive our key question ratings.
Potential changes to how we rate NHS trusts
Specifically, we are asking for feedback on:
- Re-introducing an overall quality rating for each NHS trust
- Introducing trust-level ratings for all 5 key questions
- Whether to remove location-level ratings.

Have your say

We are committed to ensuring that the changes and key decisions we make are informed by a diverse range of stakeholders, and we encourage you to get involved and have your say.

Alongside this public consultation, we are also engaging on proposed changes to the current assessment framework. The aim is to simplify and streamline the framework to be more specific and relevant to the health and care sectors that we regulate.