Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to his oral statement of 19 November 2013, Official Report, columns 1095-7, on the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, what his current estimate is of the number of medically qualified personnel who will be involved in carrying out the regulatory, advisory and inspection functions referred to in that statement.
Answer
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator for health and social care in England and is responsible for designing and implementing its new regulatory and inspection model. The CQC has provided the following information.
The CQC, led by its Chief Inspector of Hospitals, began the first wave of its new acute inspections on 16 September 2013. These will be completed on 6 December 2013.
Typically, during this programme, at least four medically qualified personnel have been involved in carrying out the CQC's regulatory, advisory and inspection functions in each case. On each inspection, the number of medically qualified personnel carrying out these functions has varied depending on the size of each trust (the number of locations it operates) and the nature of any concerns that have been highlighted from the intelligence the CQC has received about each trust.
The CQC has defined 'medically qualified personnel' as medical doctors. Other clinical staff have also been part of inspection teams: at least four nurses or allied health professionals have participated, though their numbers have varied depending on trust size and nature of concerns about each trust.