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Once a health or social care service has gained CQC registration the Care Quality Commission will continue to monitor the service to ensure that it continues to achieve the expected standards, namely those laid out in the CQC’s Essential Standards of Quality and Safety document. The way in which the CQC will carry out this monitoring is through a variety of processes with all of the information obtained being fed back into a Quality and Risk profile (QRP), which they will then use to assess the level of risk of that service not meeting the specified standards.

One of the methods that will help the Commission to populate the Quality and Risk Profile is through a compliance review. The frequency of these reviews has changed somewhat in that now providers should expect to experience at least one review every two years. Planned reviews will take place more frequently, with the shortest time span being every three months. These planned reviews at frequent intervals will be carried out where a provider is providing a high risk activity or there are real concerns about the safety and quality of care and/or treatment.

During a planned review there are a number of stages which will allow the CQC to ascertain whether the service is meeting the 16 essential standards. The first of these is a full review of the QRP held by the Care Quality Commission. If the CQC are unable to determine whether a service is operating in an acceptable way following review of the QRP they may then proceed to the next stage of information gathering. One way in which this is carried out, is to contact service users, including patients and carers, to obtain their feedback regarding their experiences. The CQC may also contact any Local Involvement Networks who may have some experience of the service or knowledge of its daily operation. The CQC also have the authority to request information from other partner bodies. After this information gathering stage of the planned review, the Care Quality Commission may then ask the service provider to forward sections of a Provider Compliance Assessment (PCA). This PCA is a tool provided by the CQC which allows services to carry out their own internal quality assessment and review in line with the Essential Standard outcomes. This tool is available via the CQC’s website and it is advised that services routinely monitor themselves in this way. The final stage of a planned review is for a compliance inspector to carry out a full assessment visit; this will be very similar to an initial registration assessment visit; if there are specific and significant concerns then this visit may be carried out by a team of inspectors.

The outcome of a planned review is almost identical to an initial registration assessment, with services being advised either that they are still fully compliant or that there is some work to be done to reach the acceptable standards. The CQC do also have the power to cancel registration if the standards not being achieved represent real risks to the service users and/or staff.