CQC proposed fee increase: investment in frontline care must remain the priority
14 January 2016
- The Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) role in regulating quality of care is key to ensuring national standards of safety and quality
- Essential that the CQC is appropriately funded to deliver its regulatory duties in a sustainable manner
- NHS Provider member feedback says the CQC should demonstrate its own 'value for money' before increasing fees
In November 2015, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) launched a consultation, Regulatory fees – have your say, setting out options for how it can move to “full cost recovery”. The consultation ends 15 January 2016. Like all public bodies with fee setting powers, the CQC is expected to follow government policy by levying fees that will over time fully cover the cost of its “chargeable activities”. Under one scenario this could result in proposed fee increases of up to 75 per cent for an individual NHS provider.
We strongly favour CQC deferring its approach to full cost recovery until it has finalised its new five year strategy and until the Department of Health has concluded its consultation
In its response to the close of the consultation into the CQC’s proposals to increase fees, Miriam Deakin, head of policy, NHS Providers, said;
“The current approach being taken to ensure the CQC’s sustainability risks placing undue burden on an overstretched health and care system. The CQC has been asked by government to move to a model where it recovers the full costs of its regulatory activities from the providers it regulates and it has been consulting on whether to do so over two or four years. A separate consultation from the Department of Health is proposing to expand the activities on which CQC can charge providers a fee. In addition CQC is still finalising its new strategy for 2016-21 in which it proposes a range of changes and improvements to how it regulates care.”