How we monitor GP practices

Page last updated: 22 February 2023
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We analyse information about individual services along with local and national data to spot potential changes in the quality of care. We call this CQC Insight.

CQC Insight helps us plan when and what we inspect. We include some of this information in our inspection reports as evidence to support our judgements about the quality of care. Changes to a rating can only happen following an inspection.

CQC Insight includes feedback from patients, as well as information from a range of data providers.

List of data providers

GP Patient Survey (GPPS)

The GP Patient Survey is an independent survey run by IPSOS MORI on behalf of NHS England. The survey is sent out to over a million people across the UK. The results show how people feel about their GP practice.

NHS Digital

NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA)

UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA)

We are not able to change data that has been published by another organisation. If you believe that the data published for your practice is incorrect, raise this directly with the relevant data provider.

We will develop CQC Insight further as we work with providers and stakeholders. We welcome your feedback to help improve it.

How we use GP Insight

We assess a practice's data against all the other practices in England. We assess relative performance for the majority of indicators using a z-score, which gives us a statistical measurement of a practice's performance in relation to the England average.

We highlight practices which significantly vary from the England average.

Understanding the CQC Insight evidence tables

This guidance lists the indicators included in the evidence table, and explains their individual definitions and methodologies.

CQC Insight: NHS GP practices - Understanding the evidence tables

Collecting information

The way we collect information about your practice depends on your rating.

Practices rated as good or outstanding

We will carry out a formal regulatory review every year.

Inspectors will identify any changes by reviewing:

  • the data we hold in CQC Insight
  • information from stakeholders, for example, Healthwatch, or a Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG)
  • information provided by the practice, including through a structured telephone call each year (as part of the provider information collection).

If the review indicates that the quality of care may have improved or deteriorated since your last rating, we may decide to inspect.

If we don’t need to take any action, we will:

  • tell you that we have carried out the review and that no further action is needed at this stage
  • publish a note of this on your profile page on our website.

An annual regulatory review forms part of our ongoing monitoring but it cannot change your rating, only an inspection can do this.

Provider information collection

We will ask you for information once a year, rather than before an inspection.

We will ask about any changes at the practice since your last inspection or annual regulatory review.

We gather this information by phone call. Your inspector will contact you four weeks beforehand to arrange a time.

During the call, they will ask you a set of questions. Your answers form the provider information collection. We will consider all the information you tell us when we make decisions.

We are committed to aligning any requests for data with our partners to minimise duplication. We update our methods as other national data collections become available. For example, if we can get specific information from a national collection, we will not ask for it in the provider information collection. If we make any changes to the collection, we will always work with providers and other organisations to make sure that they are beneficial.

Practices rated as requires improvement or inadequate

If your practice is rated as requires improvement or inadequate, the annual regulatory review process and provider information collection call does not apply.

We will continue to inspect:

  • within six months for a rating of inadequate
  • within 12 months for a rating of requires improvement.

Pre-inspection provider information request

We will still send you a provider information request before your inspection. This is to help us get information that is not available through national data collections.