Wes Streeting delivered an extraordinary warning today against trusting a watchdog’s verdicts on hospitals and care homes.
The Health Secretary said a bombshell review showed the Care Quality Commission (CQC) was ‘rotting’, describing some of its ratings as ‘invented’.
In a brutal round of interviews this morning, Mr Streeting said he was ‘stunned’ to learn one in five care providers have never been rated and it had been a decade since some hospitals, GP surgeries and care homes had been checked.
Mr Streeting said there was evidence that some of the ratings had been ‘effectively manufactured and invented using partial views and inspections combined with historic ratings and judgments’.
He said there were ‘people going into care homes with no experience of common conditions like dementia and making judgments about the quality of care, people going into hospitals with no experience of actually providing care in hospital’.
The CQC says it makes sure health and social care services in England provide people with ‘safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care’ by monitoring and inspecting what they do.
But the independent review by Dr Penny Dash found fewer than half the number of inspections were carried out last year as in 2019/20.
Those conducting the inspections also have a worrying lack of experience. Some inspectors said they had never been in a hospital before and one visiting care homes had never met a person with dementia.
Wes Streeting (pictured) has branded the CQC regulator ‘not fit for purpose’
The Health Secretary said he was ‘stunned’ to learn one in five care providers have never received a rating from the Care Quality Commission (file image)
Dr Dash, chairman of the North West London Integrated Care Board, was commissioned to conduct the review by former health secretary Victoria Atkins in May.
Mr Streeting ordered the publication of an interim report, claiming urgent action is needed to improve regulation and ensure transparency.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, he said he was ‘appalled’ by what had been found.
‘Firstly, honesty is the best policy, that’s why I’ve moved quickly to publish the interim findings because there are ratings people that will be looking at today which I can’t have confidence in, I don’t think the public can have confidence in,’ he said.
‘I’ve asked the CQC urgently to put in place transparency around those ratings so that people can see how those ratings were put together and then make a judgment about whether it’s a true and fair and accurate reflection of the quality of care.
‘Leadership is vital. We need a new permanent chief executive at the Care Quality Commission and a new chief inspector of hospitals that we can work with to turn the regulator around.’
He added: ‘I never expected to be told that one in five health and care providers had not received a rating, that some health and care providers have not been inspected for a decade, that some of those ratings are effectively manufactured and invented using partial views and inspections combined with historic ratings and judgments.
‘I am absolutely appalled.’
Mr Streeting said there were ‘brilliant people working throughout the NHS and social care but what we can’t do is pretend that there are also not enormous amounts of failure to be seen’.
‘For that failure to be rotting at the heart of the CQC is intolerable,’ he said.
‘We will not tolerate it, we will take the action needed to deliver the radical reform that organisation needs.’
Mr Streeting said members of the public checking ratings on the CQC website should ‘take them with a pinch of salt’.
But he denied that funding was the problem. Mr Streeting said: ‘I don’t think money is the issue here. I think it’s culture.’
He said there needs to be a ‘radical reform’ of the organisation and that he wanted to be clear with potential candidates about the scale of the challenge as he recruits a new permanent chief inspector of hospitals to the CQC.
He said: ‘When I joined the department, it was already clear that the NHS was broken and the social care system in crisis.
Mr Streeting said there was evidence that some of the ratings had been ‘effectively manufactured and invented using partial views and inspections combined with historic ratings and judgments’ (file picture)
Experts have previously expressed concerns that the CQC failed to expose wrongdoings at trusts that were later embroiled in major scandals.
The Dash review identified ‘significant internal failings’ which are hampering its ability to identify poor performance.
These included too few inspections, a lack of clinical expertise among inspectors, a lack of consistency in assessments, and problems with the CQC’s IT system.
Dr Dash said: ‘The contents of my interim report underscore the urgent need for comprehensive reform within the CQC.’
Mr Streeting said the government will now take immediate steps to restore public confidence in the regulator. These include increased oversight, greater transparency in how it determines its rating for providers, and a review of assessment frameworks.
Dr Dash will publish her full report in the autumn.