By Brian O’Flynn
An estimated one in three NHS acute hospitals in England has never been inspected by the health and care regulator, FactCheck analysis reveals.
And of those that have been inspected, over 40 per cent were last inspected more than five years ago – while around 13 per cent were last inspected more than ten years ago.
Regulator under fire
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) regulates all aspects of the health and social care sector in England, from GPs to care homes.
It has faced criticism in recent days as an independent review found “significant failings” in its effectiveness.
An interim report by the review said that the watchdog had failed to provide a rating for an estimated one in five of all the locations under its purview.
Our findings: NHS acute hospitals
Our exclusive FactCheck analysis of the CQC’s own data looks at one part of the regulator’s remit: NHS acute hospitals.
That’s where patients “receive active, short-term treatment for a condition”, according to the Health Foundation think tank. So that’s things like A&E and maternity units, but not GP or community-based services.
Our analysis finds that a third of NHS acute hospitals have never been inspected while being run by their current provider – that means the organisation which runs the hospital. This is usually an NHS Trust.
Our figure could include hospitals that were inspected when a different provider was in charge, though we understand any such cases can only represent a small fraction of the total.
Of those NHS hospitals that have been inspected under their current provider, we’ve found that over 40 per cent haven’t been inspected for five years or more – and 13 per cent haven’t been inspected for over a decade.
Our analysis looks at all inspections, not just those which resulted in a rating, i.e. an Ofsted-style grade, such as “good” or “requires improvement”. The watchdog doesn’t give a rating every time it inspects a location – so a hospital could sometimes be inspected and not receive a rating.
The interim report released last week by the government says only about a quarter of NHS healthcare locations overall have a published rating from CQC.
CQC’s response
The CQC told FactCheck that it “isn’t good enough” that some NHS hospitals have not been inspected in the last five years – and that it’s recently committed to increasing the number of inspections it’s doing.
The watchdog said that in some cases, it has “made assessments through other processes developed during the pandemic”, and that the data we’ve used doesn’t include its Covid monitoring.
The CQC also said its data doesn’t yet capture visits carried out under its new system of inspections, called the Single Assessment Framework, which it began to roll out in November last year.
However, we understand that this missing data would not significantly alter our findings.
