David Oliver: Our health regulators are in a crisis of competence and credibility

On 26 July the Department of Health and Social Care published Penny Dash’s interim independent review on the Care Quality Commission (CQC),1 originally commissioned by the previous government. Dash’s full independent report and accompanying action plan won’t be published until the autumn. The health and social care secretary, Wes Streeting, told radio interviewers that he was “stunned” by the “appalling failures” at England’s health and social care regulator and that the CQC was “so bad that patients cannot tell whether ratings are accurate or not,” before pledging to impose “radical reform.”In her report, Dash emphasised that the CQC’s senior management team lacked relevant clinical or operational management experience in acute, community, or primary care. She found that inspection teams lacked the expertise or experience to have any credibility with the services they were inspecting. Credibility is vital if you’re delivering verdicts on the services that people have committed their working…
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