Committee of Public Accounts - Written evidence from the Chief Executive, Action against Medical Accidents (Part 5)

Over a series of Articles we intend to look at the Committee of Public Accounts - Written evidence from the Chief Executive, Action against Medical Accidents.

This is a Published Article taken directly from the Publications Page of www.parliament.uk

You can jump straight to the full publication here

We, at Edith Ellen HQ, have been very interested in the AvMA a national charity working towards Patient Safety and Justice for Patients when "things go wrong".

The main points of this Article are

• whether the CQC should be more proactive in following up indicators of potential patient safety lapses, drawing on our research on implementation of Patient Safety Alerts issued by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA);

• whether the CQC does enough to regulate openness and transparency, both with respect to promoting the protection and support of whistleblowers, and openness with patients/their relatives when things go wrong;

• whether the CQC engages appropriately with the public; and

 

• whether the CQC’s remit is too wide.

With these main points in mind we are jumping to Point 7 of the published article: 

Is the CQC’s remit too wide?

7.1 The CQC has been given a very challenging set of roles. We have always had doubts about whether its remit should have been as wide as it is, at least until it had fully got to grips with its core responsibility towards health.

7.2 However, we believe that a decent start has been made in addressing their responsibilities. We think it would be counter-productive to reverse the direction of travel right now.

7.3 We think it is particularly important to bring General Practitioners within the same regulatory framework under the CQC. This should not be abandoned or delayed further.

7.4 One area where we do not believe it is acceptable to extend the CQC’s responsibilities still further is the hosting of Healthwatch England. As well as this being an unnecessary extra burden to the CQC, we think it is quite inappropriate for the CQC to host an organisation which is supposed to be an independent monitor of it.