THE Care Quality Commission (CQC) is inviting people to give their views on its plans to deliver a more targeted, responsive and collaborative approach to regulation across health and adult social care in England.

Having carried out a comprehensive inspection of every NHS trust in England at least once, CQC has a more detailed understanding of the quality of NHS care than ever before.

The quality regulator plans to use that understanding, together with improved systems for gathering intelligence, to move towards smaller and more targeted inspections for NHS trusts, while still being focused on what matters most to patients – whether services are safe, caring, effective, responsive to their needs and well-led.

These inspections will be based on inspection findings and ratings, as well as wider intelligence about the quality of care gathered through improved monitoring activity.

The proposals describe how CQC intends to develop its ‘next phase’ of regulation for all health and adult social care services.

There will be a particular focus at this stage to the way it will monitor, inspect, rate and report on NHS trusts and adapt its approach in response to emerging new care models.

CQC plans to work with changing care models as they develop, and ensure close alignment with other regulators to minimise unnecessary burden for providers.

CQC intends to carry out an unannounced inspection of at least one ‘core service’ (such as urgent and emergency or child and adolescent mental health wards) of a NHS trust.

The core services inspected will be chosen based on previous inspection findings and ratings, as well as wider intelligence that indicate either risk or improvement.

CQC’s consultation also outlines proposals to strengthen and simplify the assessment frameworks and ‘key lines of enquiry’ across health and adult social care, which inform its judgements.

Alongside this consultation, CQC is consulting jointly with NHS Improvement on the approach to leadership and ‘use of resources’, recognising that effective use of resources is fundamental to enable trusts to deliver and sustain high quality services for patients.

The plans in these consultations build on what CQC outlined in its five-year strategy for regulation (2016 to 2021), ‘Shaping the future.’

David Behan, chief executive of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) said: “People tell us that they want to receive care that is high quality and safe.

“This consultation is about evolving our existing approach using what we have learnt from our comprehensive inspections to help drive further improvement in the quality and safety of care, while adapting to changes in the way services are being provided.

“Our proposals for NHS trusts are designed to enable us to be more responsive to risk and improvement while at the same time being more efficient and effective. By working more closely with partner organisations, we will reduce duplication and unnecessary burden for providers.

“We want to simplify our assessments, but also strengthen them using what we have learned over the last three years to make sure they continue to highlight best practice, identify concerns and where necessary, to take appropriate action whilst supporting inadequate providers to improve their quality and safety in the interests of people who use their services.”

The consultation will close on February 14. CQC expects to formally respond to the feedback from the consultation in spring 2017.

A further consultation focusing on how CQC will regulate adult social care and primary medical care will take place next year - a link to the consultation document can be found at www.cqc.org.uk/nextphase.