In the UK access to good quality continuing care services is often a gamble and, as consumers of health care, both young [when thinking about people with LD and ASD] and old, generally have had little choice in where and how these services are provided as the continuing care of many people has shifted from the health service to the independent sector. This shift has especially raised concerns about the quality of care in private nursing homes and has placed the need to determine such quality high on the government’s policy agenda. The traditional quality assurance mechanism has relied on a registration and inspection system whereby local government authorities monitor and review service delivery. However, the processes are often bureaucratic and ineffective.
More recently, the Care Standards Act (2000) and the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001 have set out the new regulatory framework for all care homes in the UK. This will provide national standards of registration and inspection, with increased authority for health and social care agencies to take action when poor quality is suspected or detected.
A registration and inspection system can only ever provide one component of a quality system for the continuing care of older people. Some healthcare experts highlight the difficulties in determining the most appropriate mechanism for monitoring quality in care homes, particularly when the emphasis is on “care outcomes”. They point out that it is difficult to determine the impact of quality systems on the quality of care of residents and conclude that there needs to be a greater emphasis on the qualitative aspects of care and, in particular, improvement in the measurement of quality of life.
J&B Health Solutions will support you by helping ensure that all your systems are robust enough to stand up to the strictest regulatory scrutiny, and we will help you design and create audit tools which will capture patient care needs; staff training needs and mandatory training progress; as well also identify any gaps in service provision, early on before they [gaps] manifest as systemic problems.
Additionally, we also provide turnaround support and implementation plans which will be tailored to your organisations specific needs and can be delivered in a timely manner.
Contact us for a confidential conversation if you have an urgent need and or an impending CQC visit with outstanding significant matters to address.