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The Care Quality Commission checks whether hospitals, care homes and care services are meeting government standards. Visit our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

How we monitor compliance

Once providers have been registered under the Health and Social Care Act, we will monitor whether they continue to meet the essential standards of quality and safety.

This is part of our new, more dynamic and responsive approach to regulation, which places people’s experiences at its centre.

If you are looking for a quick overview of our compliance monitoring work, we have produced a guide for you.

The essential standards set out a list of the expected outcomes – that is, the experiences we expect people to have as a result of the care they receive. These outcomes are the focus of our monitoring work.

The regulation model

The diagram below outlines our model of regulation; it shows how a provider enters the system and what happens to them once they are in the system:

Diagram of our monitoring of compliance

Text version of the diagram of the regulation model

In the diagram, you can see the processes involved in our monitoring of compliance with essential standards.

Once a provider is registered with us, we will constantly gather and analyse the information we have about them. We will then use this information to make judgements about risk and any appropriate regulatory responses.

Gathering information

We gather information from a range of different sources, including our reviews, visits and the provider compliance assessment tool, and use it to help us in our monitoring work.

 

Making judgements

Once we have the information we need, we can make judgements about the risk of a provider not complying.

We also make important judgements about whether a regulatory response is needed and which action is most appropriate.

 

Publishing information

When we review the compliance of providers or take enforcement action, we will indicate this on our website. We will also brief relevant media organisations.

 

Case studies

Read one of our case studies, which follow a year in the life of a social care and a health care provider and show how our information gathering and judgements affect their work.