As part of our Better regulation, better care public consultation, which closed at the end of last year, one of our proposals was to introduce separate assessment frameworks that are more specific and relevant to the health and care sectors that we regulate.
We are grateful to everyone who provided their feedback, whether online or through our engagement events. We have considered the responses and listened to feedback, which showed overwhelming support for this proposal. We have therefore developed 4 draft sector-specific assessment frameworks. Read the background to our assessment frameworks.
There are separate assessment frameworks for each of the following sectors:
- adult social care
- mental health care
- primary care and community services
- hospitals (secondary and specialist care)
Read our draft assessment frameworks
Adult social care
- Download the draft Adult social care assessment framework Word document
- Print or share the draft Adult social care assessment framework PDF document
Mental health care
- Download the draft Mental health care assessment framework Word document
- Print or share the draft Mental health care assessment framework PDF document
Primary care and community services framework
- Download the draft Primary care and community services assessment framework Word document
- Print or share the draft Primary care and community services assessment framework PDF document
Hospitals (secondary and specialist care) framework
- Download the draft Hospitals (secondary and specialist care) assessment framework Word document
- Print or share the draft Hospitals (secondary and specialist services care) assessment framework PDF document
Share your feedback
We need your feedback on the draft assessment frameworks to help us refine them further. This will directly inform the next versions to help ensure they are practical, proportionate and focused on improving outcomes for people who use services.
Through our online and in-person engagement sessions, we asked people what they thought good quality care looks like, to enable us to develop characteristics that describe care under a rating of good. Using this, we then developed characteristics for each level of rating (outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate) for each sector framework.
The rating characteristics are a new and important part of the assessment frameworks and provide the basis on which we make judgements about care. They are designed to help the public and providers to understand what good care looks like, support our inspectors to make consistent judgements about quality, and recognise the important differences between sectors.
Feedback also strongly agreed with removing scoring from our assessment methodology and making rating judgements directly at key question level. The rating characteristics will therefore support this change.
Each framework is built from the same components:
- the 5 key questions (is the service safe, effective, caring, responsive, well-led)
- key lines of enquiry framed as structured questions that describe what we will look for on our assessments – these replace the current quality statements
- rating characteristics that describe what outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate care looks like in each sector
- I statements drawn from the Making It Real framework co-produced by Think Local Act Personal (TLAP) together with a wide range of partners and people with lived experience of health and care services. These ensure that people’s lived experience remains central to our assessments and set out what good care feels like from the perspective of those using services.
Give your feedback and views
We’re asking for views on whether the draft frameworks will:
- guide CQC in carrying out assessments and make clearer, more transparent judgements about quality
- help providers to understand what CQC will be looking for and improve the quality of care they deliver
- help CQC and providers to identify and address the issue of inequalities in care
- reflect the range of services and sectors that we regulate across health and adult social care.
We also welcome overall feedback on any areas that still need to be developed.
After this, we will carefully consider all feedback to refine each framework before we pilot and test them.
Once you have read the background about our assessment frameworks and the relevant framework, you can give your feedback.
Give your feedback and views now
The period for sharing your feedback will close on 12 June.