Notification of a CQC inspection call or visit can raise high levels of stress in all staff! It is an opportunity for the practice to show how well they are working as a team and the quality of care they are providing for their practice population.
Clinical Searches – July 2022 Update for practices in preparation for potential future CQC inspections.
There has been an updated CQC YouTube presentation on the remote searches carried out by the CQC GP SPA during a practice inspection.
- Please follow this link for the presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGshX-w98yU
The CQC slide set that details the clinical searches can be downloaded here. Slides 20-26 have the clinical detail around the searches.
These clinical searches are now routinely used when carrying out inspections of GP practices. They were designed to focus on areas of clinical importance, reflecting the profession’s agreed shared view of quality and to contribute to a consistent regulatory approach.
CQC also say that their National Professional Advisor has also provided the following information which you may find helpful.
The Specialist Pharmacy Service (SPS) who recommend monitoring intervals for all drugs, returned to normal intervals from Feb 22: Since February 2022 SPS now recommend that monitoring can proceed as normal using their medicines monitoring guidance. This is based on the usual shorter BNF and NICE CKS monitoring intervals.
The content and focus of the remote clinical searches have been agreed by the RCGP and the BMA. It represents a reasonable approach to assessing some important features of safe and effective health care delivery. The searches will be regularly reviewed and updated. This will reflect changes to guidance, new alerts or areas that are considered important for additional review.
You can find more information on how these searches have been constructed, how to download, along with FAQ on the Ardens website available from June 2022.
There are specific videos on using these searches in the various GP computer systems.
CQC also have a slide set from their webinar on their regulatory model.
Clinical system search detail can also be seen within CQC GP mythbuster 12.