New regulatory measures announced for care homes

The government has announced a number of new steps that will be taken to improve regulation of the care home sector, in partnership with the Care Quality Commission (CQC).

In response to the recent concerns about bureaucracy raised by the Focus on Enforcement review, the Department of Health and CQC have pledged to improve the coordination of inspection and monitoring visits to reduce unnecessary duplication without lowering standards.

New commissioning standards will be introduced to minimise wasteful inconsistency for providers that deal with multiple local authorities, while clearer grading of performance and greater recognition for better homes will become a priority.

Additionally, more efforts will be made to ensure providers are inspected by individuals who understand how the sector works by increasing the number of specialist inspectors, with a new quality assessment framework to support more consistent decision-making.

Finally, regulators will seek ways of helping providers to better manage their own performance and compliance in line with the requirements of the regulatory system.

All of this will help to achieve the government and CQC's stated aims of bringing greater transparency and better oversight to the sector.