In today’s medical press, both GPonline and Pulse are reporting on the CQC’s latest report on how GP surgeries are doing under CQC inspections. So far, 70 practices have been inspected: 4 are ‘outstanding’, 55 are ‘good’, but 8 ‘require improvement’.
What NASGP feels really needs to be looked at in every CQC inspection is what impact this has on those GPs who are exposed to increased risk – ‘enforced underperformance’ – when working in these practices requiring improvement. Being a regular part-time salaried GP at these practices may implicate those GPs as being responsible, yet not actually have any power to improve the situation.
One approach we would like to see is for practices to inform any visiting GP prior to arrival that they have had a CQC inspection and what if any improvements need to made. It might even be a good idea to engage their GP locums in terms of asking for their feedback, since GP locums can work in dozens of different practices in any given year.
