At Intelligent Care Software we welcome the Care Quality Commissions’ new strategy launched this month. We hope you have all had time to learn and digest what the new inspection approach will be and how the regulator will ensure services continue to be safe, effective, responsive, caring and well led.

We can see that the CQC wants to adopt a smarter way of regulating, with more focussed inspections and using a variety of ways to collect information, including tapping in to services care management systems.

There will inevitably be more responsibility on the provider to ensure information is available to their inspectors when required. This will enable them to conduct more informed and focussed inspections, which will be especially important if we ever have to lockdown again and crossing the threshold becomes a problem, as it has in the last 18 months.

You have probably experienced the structured monitoring calls during COVID, and the Infection Prevention and Control focussed inspections. We expect these focussed inspections and supportive contacts to become the norm with the new strategy, and believe that this will ultimately help services improve and is a more enabling approach than the current more general inspections.

At Intelligent Care Software we are here to help in anyway we can. If you need advice on adopting an electronic care management system, or if you need regulatory advice and support, please let us know.