CQC to go £700k over budget

CQC to go £700k over budget

Pulse reports that the CQC is planning to overspend its staff budget for inspecting primary medical services by £700,000 in a last-ditch effort to hit its end-of-year target. Its The latest performance report says it will have to rely on additional ‘bank’ inspectors to carry out an outstanding 270 GP inspections and 250 dental practice inspections by the end of March.

This comes as the budget is already £200,000 overspent and the inspection deadline has already been deferred once, from an original date of September 2016. It also comes as the CQC is currently consulting on plans for massive hikes in GP practice fees as part of a mandate to make its inspection regime self-funding.

The CQC said the additional staff will be parachuted into regions where inspection teams are running behind. It said this includes London and the South where it has struggled with recruiting inspectors, and areas where a higher proportion of practices have had poor ratings and required follow-up inspections and support.

A CQC spokesperson told Pulse: ‘Bank inspectors have always been a core part of CQC’s flexible workforce so that we can bring in additional resource where necessary. We will continue to deploy bank resource to help deliver the PMS programme by end March. This is within the overall CQC budget.’

Other issues raised in papers published ahead of a CQC board meeting included findings that 57% of practices and dentists 'disagree or strongly disagree' that ‘CQC inspections are fair and based on evidence’ in the CQC’s post-inspection survey.

Chief inspector of general practice Professor Steve Field said he was ‘surprised’ that the CQC is still finding inadequate practices at the same rate now as when it started the inspection regime, as the assumption had been that this would tail off as inspection became established. 

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