News from the Care Quality Commission: November 2024

Find out what people think about urgent and emergency care near you

We asked over 45,000 people who received urgent and emergency care in February 2024 about their experiences of care.

Two questionnaires were used, each tailored to a different type of urgent and emergency care service.

Type 1 services include A&E departments (these may also be known as casualty or emergency departments)
Type 3 services include urgent treatment centres that are run directly by an acute NHS trust (these types of service may also be known as minor injury units)

Nationally, we found that many people were broadly positive about their interactions with staff. However, a number faced lengthy waits to be assessed, and some were not given enough help to manage their pain or control their symptoms.

Join us! Work for CQC

CQC staff have a wide range of skills and work across many disciplines.

Find out about roles within CQC, Healthwatch England and the Office of the National Guardian.

Current vacancies include:

Inspectors (various specialisations and regions)
Senior Analyst (Quantitative) – Strategic Insight
Talent Management Specialist
Audit, Risk and Assurance Committee Independent Member

Benefits include generous leave entitlement, NHS or Nest pension schemes and a wide range of employee discounts.

Most roles offer flexible locations with the choice to be home-based. See the individual job listings for more information.

Browse our current vacancies
Working at CQC

New local authority assessments published

We have published 4 new reports assessing how local authorities are meeting their responsibilities to make sure people have access to adult social care and support.

The 4 new reports look at:

Telford and Wrekin Council
Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead
Westminster City Council
Surrey County Council

The reports look at 9 areas spread across 4 themes to check how well the authority is meeting their responsibilities. Each area is given a score out of 1 to 4. A score of 1 is given when evidence shows significant shortfalls for this area, and 4 when evidence shows an exceptional standard is being met.

Catch up with the Share For Better Care webinar

Hearing about the experiences of the public helps health and social care services learn from what is working and identify what needs improvement.

But only some people know how to speak up about their care. Health and care services could also be better at telling people how they can give feedback, and explaining why this matters.

Earlier this month, the Patients Association hosted a webinar looking at these issues.
In the webinar we joined Healthwatch England and the Patients Association to:

Talk about the Share for Better Care campaign
Discuss the barriers that exist to giving feedback, and potential solutions
Listen to patients explain first-hand their experience of providing feedback and how this improved their care
Look at the current ways people provide feedback, and discuss what more can be done to make sure patients’ voices are heard

If you were not able to join the webinar, the Patients Association have now made a recording available on their website.

Findings published from Ipsos’ evaluation of our assessor and inspector roles

Ipsos have now completed their evaluation of the way the previous role of inspector was split into 2 new separate roles of assessor and inspector, and have published their findings..

The decision to split the roles was influenced by our 2021 strategy and formed part of a broader strategic shift towards a more data-driven and risk-based approach to regulating health and social care services in England.

We made the decision to revert to the single inspector role in August 2024, supported by interim evaluation findings.

The final report finds that splitting the inspection workforce into assessors and inspectors has faced significant delivery challenges and did not deliver the expected outcomes.

We are considering the findings as part of its re-development of the inspector role.