Regulation of NHS hospitals
Joint statement on changes to regulation and oversight of NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts proposed in response to the Francis report.
Applies to England
Documents
Details
This joint policy statement provides further information on the changes to the regulation and oversight of NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts proposed in the government’s initial response to the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry (the Francis report) and related clauses in Part 2 of the Care Bill. It is produced by the Department of Health, the Care Quality Commission, Monitor, NHS England and the NHS Trust Development Authority.
The Francis report highlighted a lack of clarity over which part of the regulatory, commissioning and supervisory system is responsible for taking decisive action in response to a failure in quality of care.
The government’s initial response, ‘Patients First and Foremost’, sets out that it will develop a single failure regime to provide a clear and co-ordinated regulatory approach to identifying and dealing with failures of quality with a more clearly defined and timely end point for failed hospitals. This statement puts these changes and the clauses in Part 2 of the Bill in a broader context.