LTCcovid Country Profiles

Responses to 4.07. Reforms to Long-term care regulatory and quality assurance systems

Canada

 Health Standards Organization (HSO) is developing (as of November 2021) a National Standard of Canada (NSC) for the co-design and delivery of integrated, resident-and-family-centred LTC services across Canada. The HSO National Long-Term Care Services Standard will provide LTC homes across Canada with evidence-informed practices that define how LTC homes and LTC teams can work collaboratively to keep people safe, provide safe, reliable, and high-quality care, and demonstrate positive, outcomes-focused change (source: Long-Term Care Services – HSO Health Standards Organization).

Last updated: February 11th, 2022

England (UK)

The government plans to establish an enhanced assurance framework for adult social care, working alongside the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and local authorities to improve adult social care oversight, access, and outcomes across England.

The Health and Care Bill introduces a new duty for the CQC to review and make an assessment of the delivery of adult social care duties by local authorities. Where they find a significant failure, the Secretary of State will act to secure improvement. The CQC will publish the findings of their reviews with the intentions of allowing people to see how their local authority is performing in the delivery of its adult social care duties.

On May 27, 2021, the CQC launched its new strategy outlining how it plans to change and transform to deliver more effective regulation. There are four key themes set out.

1. People & communities – The CQC wants regulation to be driven by people’s needs and experiences, placing a focus on what’s important to people and communities as they access, use, and move between services. A key outcome for this is the development of a clear definition of quality and safety that is in line with people’s changing needs and expectations.
2. Smarter regulation – The CQC wants to use smarter, more dynamic, and flexible regulation that provides up-to-date and high-quality information and ratings. In achieving this the CQC aims to move away from inspection-reliant regulation by placing more focus on data and feedback from people on their experiences of care.
3. Safety through learning – The CQC wants to regulate for stronger safety cultures across the sector, prioritising learning and improvement, and collaboration.
4. Accelerating improvement – The CQC aims to have accelerated improvements in the quality of care and encouraged and enabled safe innovation that benefits people or results in more effective and efficient services (Sources: https://www.gov.uk/government/health-and-care-bill-factsheets/health-and-care-bill-adult-social-care-assurance-and-support; https://www.ridout-law.com/cqcs-new-strategy-what-does-it-say-and-how-will-it-be-implemented/).

Last updated: March 28th, 2022   Contributors: William Byrd  |  

Wales (UK)

The Health and Social Care (Quality and Engagement) (Wales) Act became law on June 1, 2020. The Welsh Government is working to bring the Act into force in spring 2023. The Act will strengthen the existing duty of quality on NHS bodies and extend this to the Welsh Ministers in relation to their health service functions. This places an overarching duty of quality on the Welsh Ministers and reframes and broadens the existing duty on NHS bodies. Additionally, the duty seeks to strengthen governance arrangements by requiring the Welsh Ministers and NHS bodies to report annually on the steps they have taken to comply with the duty and assess the extent of any improvement in outcomes (Source: https://gov.wales/health-and-social-care-quality-and-engagement-wales-act-summary-html).

Last updated: March 28th, 2022