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• Who we are
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  • Monitoring essential standards of quality and safety
  • Improving health and social care
    • Special reviews and studies
      • Review of healthcare for people in care homes 2009/10
      • Review of stroke services 2009/10
      • Meeting the physical health needs of those with mental health needs and learning disabilities 2009/10
      • Support for families with disabled children
      • Review of social services response to peoples first contact with them 2009/10
      • The impact of the economic downturn on the quality of health and social care
      • Reviews and studies: policies relating to extenuating circumstances and extension to data submission deadlines
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Home > About CQC > What we do > Improving health and social care > Special reviews and studies

Under the Health and Social Care Act (2008), we are responsible for a programme of special reviews and studies.

Special reviews and studies are projects that look at themes in health and social care. These projects focus on services, pathways of care or groups of people and can result in: 

• A study - national-level findings based on our research
• A review - local assessments (using scores or judgements). 

2009/10 programme

Update: July 2010

The timing of some of our reviews has been reconsidered to allow CQC to complete its programme of work to register adult social care and independent health care providers.

• Meeting the physical health needs of those with a learning disability review: On hold until October,
• Meeting the physical health needs of those with a mental health issue review: On hold until December
• Commissioning for healthy weight review: Cancelled.

The following reviews and studies are running this year. For more details on a topic, please click on its title:

• Meeting the healthcare needs of people in care homes
• Services for people who have had a stroke and their carers
• Meeting the physical health needs of people with learning disabilities and people with mental illnesses
• Support for families with disabled children
• Social services' response to people's first contact with them
• The impact of the financial downturn on the quality of care

Download our report on CQC reviews in 2009/10 and supporting documents in different formats

Special Reviews and Studies Timetable (PDF, 17KB, opens in new window)

More information on special reviews

Special Reviews and Studies - Information for Councils (PDF, 47KB, opens in new window)

Special Reviews and Studies - Information for PCTs and Trusts (PDF, 50KB, opens in new window)

Our reviews and studies allow us to look in-depth at what is happening to people. Some of our reviews look at issues in a particular type of organisation. An example would be a review of surgery in acute hospitals. Many of our reviews however look at what happens to people across different services. For example, our review of stroke services looks at the quality of care for those who have had a stroke across acute hospital care, community health services and social services.

Of fundamental importance to each review is the establishment and involvement of an advisory group. This group includes people who use services and their representatives, managers who provide and commission services, service professionals, academic experts, and representatives of national bodies and relevant professional colleges. The advisory group plays a key role, by ensuring our reviews ask the right questions.

The way we assess performance varies from review to review, depending on the topic under review. We generally assess organisations by scoring their performance on a range of performance data, or by visiting and inspecting them, or a mixture of both these approaches. The results of special reviews will be published and participation is compulsory.

Special review scores or judgements are stand-alone. However, findings will feed into registration processes for organisations that provide care: the result of a special review could lead to further questioning by CQC's local staff, and could ultimately lead to a change of registration status or enforcement action. 

2010/11 programme

We will publish our final programme of reviews and studies for 2010/11 later in the year.

The programme will be created using information from:

• our consultation on reviews and studies topics, commissioned earlier this year
• quality and risk profiles on individual providers of care

We may also use lessons from earlier work to test whether providers comply with registration requirements.

Our findings will help us to discover whether there are other areas of health and social care that we need to investigate. We will create additional proposals for reviews and studies if other issues arise.

Previous reviews and studies

We have completed two reviews and studies started by one of our predecessor organisations, the Healthcare Commission: 

• Use of information and impact on patient care
• Medicines management after discharge

Important policies

Our policies relating to extenuating circumstances and extension to data submission deadlines can be found here.

Please direct any queries in relation to Special Reviews and Studies to: reviews.studies@cqc.org.uk

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