Your CQC Assessment Visit

With all Health and Social Care Providers who provide regulated activities being required to register with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), more and more providers and registered managers are having to face a site visit from a CQC assessor. For many, this is a great leap into the unknown which can bring with it a great deal of pressure and uncertainty, but there are three key steps that you can undertake to assess your own readiness for your assessment visit.

To be facing an imminent assessment visit you will have had to submit an application form and references to the CQC, and to have submitted them accurately and within the specified timescales. If you've got that bit right you will have received either a call or an email from your local CQC assessor to arrange a visit date. With these documents being the first step of the application process it's wise to revisit them and check exactly what it is you declared when you filled them in. Read through all of the references and application forms to ensure that anything you've written is still accurate today and that you know exactly what declarations you made right at the start of the process. Pay particular attention to the documents that you will have confirmed you have in place, such as photographic ID, a full CV and explanations for any gaps in your CV.

With your forms and references checked and reviewed you should then review your policies and procedures. Do you know where everything is and exactly what policies align with the CQC's essential standards? Ask yourself exactly how your policies demonstrate compliance. If you can find and navigate through your policies with ease, and you can relate them to each of the CQC's outcomes, then you know that you're almost ready for your visit. If you're struggling to understand the content or the content of the CQC's guidance then you need to sit down and revise and/or edit policies.

The final stage of this self assessment for readiness is to walk through your premises looking for signs of compliance or more importantly signs of non-compliance. Are all your staff wearing name badges? Can you hear staff explaining procedures appropriately to patients? Are there adequate hand washing facilities? Is there disabled access? It's points like these that the CQC assessor will be observing as they walk through your premises, and it's points like these that may be written down in all your documentation but in practice they're nowhere to be seen.

Having completed these three steps you will either feel extremely confident and prepared for your assessment or you will feel even more anxious. If the outcome is the latter then firstly, do not panic, you still have time to improve your policies and procedures, and your knowledge of them, you still have time to better understand the Care Quality Commission's expectations, and you still have time to improve standards to ensure that your service is fully CQC compliant and able to sail through the impending assessment visit.