CQC approach to assessing local authorities and integrated care systems
From 1 April 2023 CQC will have new powers that allow us to provide a meaningful and independent assessment of care at a local authority and integrated care system level.
Repost from CQC Newsletter Update:
When assessing local authorities and integrated care systems, we'll use our new single assessment framework. Although we’ll use this in the same way as when assessing providers, the approach will be tailored carefully to their specific context.
Local authority assessments
We've set out the timeline for implementing our approach to local authority assessments, beginning in April 2023. This will start with reviewing data and published documentary evidence across all local authorities. We will not publish this data and evidence at individual local authority level. We will instead use our independent voice to publish it at an overall national level as a collection of evidence.
We also intend to start a limited number of pilot assessments from April. These will cover up to 5 local authorities between April and September 2023. From September we plan to complete an initial formal assessment for all local authorities to establish a starting point. We will therefore start formal assessments in September, and aim to carry out up to 20 assessments between September and December. From early 2024 we plan to continue to carry out further formal assessments and report our findings.
More information on the timeline and approach can be found on our website.
We've also published our draft interim guidance for assessing local authorities. The guidance we are publishing today is currently subject to government approval as required by the Health and Care Act 2022.
Integrated care system assessments
We also want to start assessing integrated care systems and are currently working with and seeking approval from the Department of Health and Social Care on our approach to implement these assessments. We'll publish more on this approach, and our guidance on how we will assess integrated care systems using our single assessment framework, as soon as possible.