A new approach to regulating, inspecting and rating care services - the CQC consultation.

Partner organisation Care Quality Commission (CQC) have begun a consultation on a series of handbooks for providers to understand how they will regulate, inspect and rate:

• NHS acute hospitals
• Mental health services
• Community health services
• GP practices
• Out-of-hours services
• Care homes
• Domiciliary care services
• Hospice services.

The handbooks which offer detailed guidance on these processes, reflect current thinking which is to make sure that health and social care services provide people with safe, effective, compassionate and high quality care services. The CQC are keen build public confidence in their work as they work to encourage care services to improve.

The consultation follows the development over the last year of radical changes to the way they regulate health and care services, developed in partnership with the public, providers, staff and organisations with an interest in their work.

Central to the changes they are proposing is a commitment to regulate and inspect services in different ways, led by Chief Inspectors and more specialist and expert inspection teams which include members of the public. This is being supported by a new system of intelligent monitoring which will include listening better to people's experiences of care and using the best information across the system.

The consultation runs until 4 June 2014, and there will be a series of events over this time with the public, providers and interested groups to discuss the plans.

Following the consultation, the CQC will publish a final update of these handbooks in September 2014, before formally introducing the changes in all these types of services from October 2014, when the regulations underpinning them come into effect.

Further consultations on their work and on how they will regulate, inspect and rate other types of care services will follow later this year and early next year.