Our reporting and advocacy work on how the CQC has been regulating the duty of candour in England.
How the CQC and NHS bodies responded to the new legislation
In August 2016, Avma published its first report on how the Care Quality Commission (CQC) had been regulating the statutory duty of candour.
The study showed that CQC inspections of NHS trusts in 2015 were very inconsistent and often superficial in how they assessed compliance with the duty, and that even where they identified non-compliance, there was little or no evidence that the CQC was taking steps to ensure that NHS trusts improved. It was also found that the CQC could not identify a single example in which they had taken action over an alleged individual breach of the duty and had no system in place to monitor these.
In 2018, we published an update to the 2016 report which found that the CQC requires improvement in how it regulates the duty of candour.
We found that the CQC doesn’t record how many individual allegations it receives and has no system to ensuring that allegations are dealt with. Inspections are inconsistent and the CQC does not publicise any enforcement action it takes. Although there had been significant improvements since our previous report in 2016, we were still concerned and made a series of recommendations.
