The Head of the Care Quality Commission, left. She can be sweet as long as you don't get in the way of her stick.
Story snaffled from The Times about the merging of some, almost useful, commissions (including my personal fav The Healthcare Commission) to form this new Super ]Quango...I mean mightily powerful 'Care Quality Commission'. The Commission is going to be led by Baroness Young of Old Scone (I kid you not..that is her title). I can't take her seriously, however baronessish she is.
So what is it's remit? Well, to do all the things the previous commissions were doing (or not) on half the budget. Government stance is that it will oversee how some of the most vulnerable people are cared for. There's nothing like setting your goalpost too high is there?..and this is nothing like it.
From April of next year it will be in charge of registering, investigating and assessing all NHS and private health and care-home providers in England. I was under the assumption that it would also be overseeing acute psychiatric care (with particular focus on those people under a section).
The lady of the scone has been quoted as saying "We want to talk softly but carry a big stick". I wonder if that is to beat patients away with when they try and pass their concerns on to her!
Much has been made of its new powers, which include fines for hospitals that fail to meet expected standards. A maximum fine of £50,000 will be incurred by tax payers for those care providers who kill patients without providing a decent enough explanation as to why.
The best performing care providers will get clotted cream and jam with their scones and proper bone china cups and saucers to have their tea in.
The Care Quality Commission "Caring for the vunerable?
ReplyDeleteThe Healthcare Commission , one of the useless quangos its morphing from, recently insisted its Disability Equality Scheme (DES) only applied to its own workers and its role as an employer.
This is exactly what a lot of the NHS Trusts and PCT's the Healthcare Commission was paid to monitor thought about their own DES's as well and as pointed out here one of the great dangers of Government quangos having regulatory responsibility over state funded/related business is how easilly this kind of oversight can be pre-configured to manifest self serving bureaucratic political outcomes rather than any real improvement in scrutiny, accountability and standards and quality of care.
With Baroness Young in Charge of this new Care Quality Commission quango the Government has a trusted fuedal title and ligger at the helm. This croneyism is sure to lead to worse healthcare and social care outcomes all round and the sooner the healthcare and social care systems are privatised to enable people the choice to pick another service if the one they are using is shit the better as state monopolies simply cannot be trusted to self regulate or treat those who complain about poor standards and quality of service fairly.
It's all about statistics & accounts,not care.Sick innit ?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the links Norm
ReplyDeleteI see the Government said it carried out a consultation before it introduced the CQC.
Well, we all know consultations are a kind of puppet show front because the decisions are already made.
As for the Disability Equality Scheme not applying to service users....does anything of any possible benefit apply to us?
Hi Sis
ReplyDeleteIt is not just sick...it is a sick con!