The Care Quality Commission (CQC) are the independent regulators of health and adult social care in England


Group of Older People Walking OutdoorsThe role of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) is to make sure health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate, high-quality care and they encourage care services to improve.

CQC monitor, inspect and regulate services to make sure they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety and publish what they find, including performance ratings to help people choose care.

They:

  • Register care providers.
  • Monitor, inspect and rate services.
  • Take action to protect people who use services.
  • Speak with an independent voice, publishing regional and national views of the major quality issues in health and social care.

CQC: Strategy

Over the next five years, CQC will focus on four priorities:

  • Encourage improvement, innovation and sustainability in care: work with others to support improvement, adapting approaches as new care models develop, and publish new ratings of NHS trusts' and foundation trusts' use of resources.
  • Deliver an intelligence-driven approach to regulation: use information from the public and providers more effectively to target resources where the risk to the quality of care is greatest and to check where quality is improving.
  • Promote a single shared view of quality: work with others to agree a consistent approach to defining and measuring quality, collecting information from providers, and delivering a single vision of high-quality care.
  • Improve efficiency and effectiveness: work more efficiently, achieving savings each year, and improving how we work with the public and providers.

CQC: Governance

The CQC management structure is headed by the Board and supported by the Executive Team.

Board

The CQC senior decision-making body, it provides leadership to ensures CQC are successful and sustainable; it also sets the strategy, purpose and values.

Executive Team

The Executive Team are responsible for our day-to-day running, oversing the delivery of business plan objectives and ensuring CQC use resources properly and manage performance well.

CQC: Partnerships

The CQC work closely with other organisations that manage and oversee the health and social care system, working togetehr to spot and stamp out bad practices.

In partnership, the goal is to:

  • share information about services.
  • improve how care is overseen.
  • make the most use of joint resources and activities.
  • reduce duplication.