This research looks at the support available to health and social care providers to help them improve.
We commissioned RSM UK Consulting LLP to carry out this research, write the summary below, and the full report.
Purpose of this research
The reason for doing this research is to assist CQC find support which is available to health and social care providers to help them improve. This research aimed to find out if different types of health and social care provider (for example, GPs, hospitals or care homes) get different support, and if there are any providers that don't get enough support. The list made during this research can help CQC to show health and care providers where to find the right help.
Background and introduction
RSM UK Consulting LLP (RSM) worked with Care Quality Commission (CQC) to create a list of support which can help health and social care providers (for example, GPs, hospitals and care homes) to improve their services. There is no one definition of what improvement support is. At the beginning of this research, RSM and CQC agreed to describe improvement support as using methods, tools, guidance or advice to create an improvement which can be measured. This will make the care provided within a health and social care setting (for example, doctors surgery, hospital or care home) safer and higher quality.
Findings from the research
What support is available to different types of health and social care providers and what does this support look like?
Who is providing improvement support and what are their qualifications?
- We found 61 organisations which help health and social care providers to improve. Most organisations were from the public sector (organisations owned by the government, paid for with money raised from taxes) or third sector (such as charities or community/ voluntary organisations), not private sector (owned by individuals or organisations) This is because we were focusing on free help, and many private providers did not offer free support.
- The people who provide support don't all have the same qualifications. They're chosen because they have experience or special knowledge that can help in certain situations.
Who is improvement support offered to?
- About 36% of the organisations offer help to all types of health and social care providers. But the help they offer might be more relevant for primary/ community care (for example, GPs) and secondary/ specialist care (for example, hospitals) in comparison to adult social care (for example, care homes).
- Overall, there is less support and fewer types of support available for adult social care providers.
Type of support available
- The most common type of support offered was documents containing helpful advice, followed by online learning materials, improvement programmes and access to groups of other organisations. These types of support were available to all types of providers offering health and social care services.
- There were also other types of support available including training (for example, courses), consultancy services (access to people with special knowledge who can provide specific help to a service), expert advice and coaching and mentoring. These types of support were less likely to be available to adult social care providers in comparison to primary/ community and secondary/ specialist care providers.
How support can be accessed
- Some types of support such as consultancy services typically require a fee for access. Others such as documents containing helpful advice were free to access.
- Some organisations offering improvement support required memberships to access their help.
- Staff who provide adult social care (for example, care home staff) told us that the support they access is mostly free.
- Most health and social care providers access support because they want to. They are not typically told to by CQC or others to access support.
- The main way of accessing support is through the website of the organisation offering improvement support.
- Many improvement support organisations rely on word of mouth to gain clients.
Design of improvement support
- Improvement support was designed during workshops with health and social care staff, experts, those who have accessed health and social care services, and CQC.
- It is unclear how improvement support organisations let health and social care providers know about the support they can provide.
What CQC can learn from this research
Which types of health and social care providers get less support, and in what way can CQC or others add value?
- There is no one definition of what improvement support is. CQC could ask people for feedback on the definition used as part of this research.
- It is sometimes unclear how support can be accessed. CQC could sign post health and social care providers to improvement support which is available to them.
- There is less support available to adult social care providers CQC could do more research to understand why this is.
- Some types of support are less common than others. For example, fewer organisations offer coaching in comparison to guidance/ evidence.
- CQC could bring together organisations who offer improvement support and providers of health and social care to talk about how to solve the following problems:
- A lack of support that focuses on difficulties around hiring staff and keeping them.
- Support offered often does not apply to health and social care providers which are more complicated. For example, organisations who provide more than one type of specialist care.
- A lack of support which considers how primary/ community, secondary/ specialist care and adult social care providers work together.
Areas for future research
Some areas where further research might be helpful were identified. These were:
- Extra research is needed to gather more detail on who receives improvement support and the type of support which is available.
- Research focusing on support which is paid for by health and social care providers.
- CQC run a survey every year for health and social care providers. It would be helpful to add questions which ask how internal teams within each provider organisation helps them to improve their services. This must be balanced with the burden on providers and increasing the time taken to complete.
- Use the database and learnings from this research to help primary/ community care, secondary/ specialist care and adult social care providers to identify sources of support.
- CQC are rolling out the Single Assessment Framework to local authorities (councils). They could ask questions about whether these local authorities offer help to health and social care providers and if they do, what type of help they offer and how it can be accessed.