Independent report

Review into the operational effectiveness of the Care Quality Commission: full report

Final findings and recommendations of the review into the operational effectiveness of the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

Applies to England

Documents

Details

In May 2024, Dr Penny Dash was asked by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to conduct a review into the operational effectiveness of the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

An interim report of her work, providing a high-level summary of her emerging findings, was published in July 2024.

This full report summarises the final findings of the review, outlining the necessary changes to start improving CQC. It makes 7 recommendations and is aimed at:

  • health and care professionals
  • health and social care services
  • academic and professional institutions
  • the general public

Alongside the review’s full report, DHSC wanted to independently determine if the review’s concerns were substantiated with objective data through the consideration of a number of research questions. The results of this research can be found in the accompanying ‘Analysis of Care Quality Commission data on inspections, assessments and ratings, 2014 to 2024’ and ‘Analysis of Care Quality Commission data on inspections, assessments and ratings, 2014 to 2024: supplementary data tables’.

A second review considering the wider landscape for quality of care, with an initial focus on safety, will be published in early 2025.

Updates to this page

Published 15 October 2024
Last updated 17 October 2024 + show all updates
  1. Updated 'Review into the operational effectiveness of the Care Quality Commission: full report' (the first paragraph of 'Concern 5' under 'Conclusion 5' of the 'Conclusions' section) and 'Analysis of Care Quality Commission data on inspections, assessments and ratings, 2014 to 2024' ('Use of key questions, quality statements and evidence categories' in the 'Executive summary', and '5. Which key questions, quality statements and evidence categories are being prioritised under CQC’s new assessment framework?' in the 'Results' section) to clarify 2 different ways in which CQC’s usage of quality statements and evidence categories under the new single assessment framework could be analysed. Both approaches lead to the same substantive conclusions.

  2. First published.

Sign up for emails or print this page