The Care Quality Commission is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department of Health of the United Kingdom. It was established in 2009 to regulate and inspect health and social care services in England.
We monitor, inspect and regulate services to make sure they meet fundamental standards of quality and safety and we publish what we find, including performance ratings to help people choose care.
We use the evidence we collect to reach judgements about the quality of care. We publish reports about the services we inspect on our website.
After each inspection, we produce a report. In most cases our reports include ratings, which show our overall judgement of the quality of care.
Our reports set out what our findings on each of the five key questions mean for the people who use the service. We describe the good practice we find, as well as any concerns we have. We clearly set out any evidence about breaches of regulations.
We also make recommendations to help the care provider improve their rating.
CQC suspended their routine inspection programme in March 2020 in response to Covid-19 and do not intend to resume it for the immediate future. CQC have continued to use a mix of onsite and off-site monitoring to ensure the public have assurance as to the safety and quality of the care they receive. As we emerge from the pandemic CQC are further developing their monitoring approach.
