Assessing quality and performance

Once we have completed our assessment and the factual accuracy check process is over, we will publish a report of our findings.

This information will be published in a different format to the inspection reports under our previous model. The biggest difference is that the information is all published on our website rather than in a PDF document.

This means the information will be easier to use on a mobile device and more accessible to people using assistive technology.

You will still be able to download, print or share a copy of the report.

What the report will cover

Your report will be structured around our new assessment framework. It will contain sections for each area of the framework we have looked at during the assessment.

This means information on what we have found about:

• Your service overall
• The ‘key questions’ we have assessed
• The ‘quality statements’ we have assessed under each of those key questions.

For hospitals and other services where we previously reported on multiple core services, there will also be a section of the report with information about the location overall.

Overall service information

The information in this section will include:

• An overall rating for the service
• A summary of our current view of the service written by our assessment team
• Where relevant, a summary of people’s experiences of the service written by our assessment team.

The description of our current view of your service will explain the overall rating and any concerns we have. It will not be based solely on the findings of the latest assessment.

For example, where an assessment has only looked at a small part of your service, we will use what we know from previous assessments alongside this.

Where we have looked at evidence about people’s experience of your service during the assessment, we will include a summary of this. As with the summary of our current view of the service, this section will use information from previous assessments where needed.

Key question information

For each of the key questions we have assessed, we will publish a:

• Rating
• Score
• Summary of our findings.

The score we publish for a key question will be out of 100 and will be calculated from the scores awarded for the quality statements within that area.

The score is used to help us reach the rating and ensure this is done consistently.

Quality statement information

For each of the quality statements we have assessed, we will publish a:

• Score
• Statements explaining what that score means (we refer to these as ‘judgement statements’)
• Summary of our key findings for each evidence category we looked at.

The score we publish for a quality statement will be on a scale of 1 to 4. It will be based on the evidence categories we have looked at for the quality statement.

Overall location information

For hospitals and other services where we previously reported on core services, we will continue to publish aggregated information about the location overall.

For example, as well as the information above about a particular service (such as surgery or maternity) at a hospital, we will also publish:

• A rating and summary for the hospital overall
• Ratings, scores and summaries for the key questions we have assessed for the hospital overall.

How we will improve the information we publish

When we publish the first reports under our new model, the pages on our website for your service will look the same as they do now.

Throughout 2024, however, we will deliver some improvements to the way we display the information. These will include:

• New visualisations of the scoring information to make it clear where a service sits on our ratings scale and in comparison to equivalent services nationally and locally.
• Separate profiles for services at the same location but where we do not aggregate ratings to an overall level. For example, where a care home and a homecare agency or a GP practice and an out-of-hours GP service are provided from the same location.

We will also improve the way you can refine search results using ratings and scores.