Link: NHS watchdog faces investigation

From The Guardian:

“The watchdog responsible for overseeing NHS hospitals and care homes is being urgently investigated by the Department of Health over a series of alleged failures that could have risked patient care.

“The [Care Quality Commission]’s chief executive, Cynthia Bower, spent last Thursday morning being questioned by Una O’Brien, the health department’s permanent secretary, before a team of Whitehall officials descended on the watchdog’s headquarters in the City that afternoon.

“The inquiry coincides with investigations by the National Audit Office and the Commons public accounts committee.”

And background:

“The Guardian has established that:

“• The CQC misled parliament in its annual report, overstating the number of inspections and reviews of the NHS, independent healthcare and adult social care sectors it carried out. Rather than the 15,220 “inspections and reviews” it claimed to have undertaken in the year ending March 2011, it has now admitted to the DoH that the correct figure is 7,368.

“• There has been rising disquiet over the CQC’s “light touch” regulation. Until May 2011, when BBC’s Panorama exposed the scandal of abuse at Winterbourne View, a private hospital for people with learning disabilities, the CQC had launched just one investigation. By contrast, its predecessor, the Healthcare Commission, completed 16 investigations in five years. After the BBC’s story the regulator launched two investigations into NHS hospital trusts.”

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About Paul Bradshaw

Founder of Help Me Investigate. I'm a visiting professor at City University London's School of Journalism, and run an MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University. I publish the Online Journalism Blog, and am the co-author of the Online Journalism Handbook and Magazine Editing (3rd edition). I have a particular interest in Freedom of Information and data journalism.

One thought on “Link: NHS watchdog faces investigation

  1. Multiple scelerosis patients are not getting the right help in UK at all.
    I had bladder botox twice that nearly killed me 2 weeks after last year.Done and NOT clinically triallled.
    Have had to fly to Poland to get CCSVI as our NHS wont do it to ms patients simple to do costs approx 300 pounds in NHS,
    MS society have had billions donated for decades and wont help any of us either have done 100s of antidotes in Parliament and to david cameron my own conclusion is NO ONE CARES if we live or die

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