We were somewhat surprised to recieve an unannounced inspection from CQC on 22rd December, just at a busy time for carers and a reduced manning at the office, but well done to everone who made the inspector very welcome and showed great professionalism.
I must admit that the CQC inspector was a lovely lady and very professional as well, so did not approach the inspection in a threatening or aggressive manner which was great. The team was able to furnish her with all the information she required (as we are totally electronic here we dont have paper files so we had to "pull" information on request from our CRM system and data vault).
I am happy to report that I have now recieved the draft report back, and in all quality standards Nobilis has been assessed as "Compliant", with no concerns raised. I will put the finalised report on our web site once CQC have confirmed the draft. But here is the issue for me. ...
"Compliant" simply says we are not causing concerns. But surely, that is a very wide band, and fails to differentiate between the simply competent agencies and those that are truely excelling. I know that the star system was not perfect, but from a public perspective it at least gave some indication about quality. Removing the star system without a replacement is leaving agencies without an independant assessment of quality. The proposal to outsource the quality system a la restraunt "Michelin stars" had its problems, but is not as daft as a crowd-sourced (unverifiable) "Trip advisor" model.
Now that both the "Michelin" and "Trip Advisor" models seem to have been kicked into the long grass, does anyone know what else is being considered, or perhaps more importantly a time scale? It looks like the care industry is heading for YEARS without any quality measures, just at the time when many agencies have finally made the mental leap to a retail-model and are focussing on private-clients and direct payment clients.
Could we not turn back on CQC stars at least until somethink more permenant is in place?
