CQC Inspections - The Positive Perspective by Nicki Rowland

Many dental professionals still perceive CQC inspections to be a negative thing. Nicki Rowland, Owner of Practices Made Perfect by Nicki Rowland, sees the new CQC inspection regime from a highly positive viewpoint giving us a framework for best practice across our dental practices.

Quality Assurance is King
When you hear the phrase quality assurance, what picture does it conjure up in your mind? Well, Wikipedia says that ‘Quality assurance is a way of preventing mistakes or defects in manufactured products and avoiding problems when delivering solutions or services to customers; which ISO 9000 defines as “part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled”.’

However, what does quality assurance mean to us in our dental environments? Well, it is the process of scheduling your compliance, reviewing, monitoring and evaluating your systems and acting upon any discrepancies or areas for improvement in an appropriate timeframe.

Ultimately, CQC inspectors want to see evidence that you are reviewing, updating and appropriately amending policies and procedures annually and that you are carrying out risk assessments, audits and surveys in a timely fashion.

If areas for improvement are identified, they are being rectified with evidence shown that team members have learned from the situation and that continuous improvement is being driven internally.

The CQC has provided dental practices with the providers’ handbook, which is a comprehensive guide. This should support you to plan your compliance and communications.

Shaping the Future
In their ‘Shaping the Future’ publication, CQC has documented proposed amendments to the current inspection to ‘stabilise’ their systematic approach. Each team member is expected to have an ‘intelligent awareness’ of compliance and how it should be reflected in the reality of day to day work in practice. Communication is essential and CQC will want to see ‘ring-fenced’ time for staff /training meetings so providers and registered managers can train their teams on legislation.

Not only that but, these meetings are crucial to ‘learning’ from significant events, incidents and accidents and catalysing better working practice. Registers of attendance, agendas and minutes of meetings are vital to demonstrating your commitment to quality assurance and gaining staff ‘buy-in’.

Not only is the CQC wishing to see evidence for active communication with your staff but they also require you to interact with your patients. Dental teams need to be running annual patient and staff satisfaction surveys and acting on feedback if it is appropriate and practicable to do so.

Patients should also be given the opportunity to give feedback at any point by way of a comments book or comments and suggestions box. CQC want to see that you are listening to your service users and your team to ensure that you are delivering ‘Person-centred care’ (Regulation 9).

An Indistinguishable Role.
The role of Practice Managers has evolved radically over the past few years. Essentially, they are now working in an ‘executive’ capacity and could be called ’Compliance Managers’ at the end of the day.

Practice management and compliance activities have become almost indistinguishable areas of work as the Care Quality Commission (CQC) began implementing its new inspection regime in April 2015. Even evidence for business planning, financial information and strategic objectives are being asked for particularly within registration inspections and if there is a change of ownership within a practice.

Increased regulatory requirements have demanded that practice policies, procedures and quality assurance are a top priority for dental practices.

What is an Executive?
When you look at the definition of an executive it is an individual who leads, manages, thinks strategically, is accountable and represents their organisation at all times.

The new CQC regime not only gives us a framework for excellence in our practices but also a tool that guides us to work as executives. As an ex-practice owner, I remember the sleepless nights and nightmares about compliance and whether I was meeting standards or not.

In my view, embracing Fundamental Standards and working within the key lines of enquiry (KLOEs) can bring the following benefits to your practice:

1. Strong leadership – Builds trust and aligns your team to your ‘vision’.
2. Strategic management – Develops a business plan that can be monitored to optimize practice growth.
3. Good governance – Develops a compliance system for generating best practice across all areas of work.
4. Accountability – Ensures that individuals are responsible, committed and answerable for their performance at work.
5. Sound communication – Keeps your team educated and focused to achieve personal practice objectives.
6. Openness and honesty – generates trusting and loyal relationships with both patients and staff.
7. Safe, caring and effective treatment – delivering high-class, patient-centred care promotes word of mouth referrals.
8. A successful practice that surpasses its competition.

Take the Positive Approach
CQC has given us a compliance framework that, if embraced, directs us to work as executives and drives improvement and best practice in our dental practices. It also provides a solid foundation on which to develop our business strategy, grow our businesses and nurture a strong culture. So put resistance aside, accept your legal and professional responsibilities and work hard to achieve an outstanding CQC inspection report. At the end of the day, it is your most powerful marketing tool!