‘Ofsted style’ ratings for NHS

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has ordered a review to assess the merits of an ‘Ofsted style’ system of ratings for hospitals and care homes.

The review will look at the way in which a new ratings system could help end the “crisis in standards of care” that exists in parts of the health and social care system, the Department of Health said.

It will look at how information about services can be communicated to the public and how this information can be used to drive up standards across the system.

Hunt ordered the review at the end of 2012 and spoke publicly about the plans this week to a House of Lords committee investigating the impact of Britain’s ageing population on public services.

The minister reportedly told the peers that when it comes to the 8,000 GP practices across the country: “The public don’t really know which ones are good and which ones are poor and we don’t really know that in our hospitals.”

He proposed a “very thorough and very public independent inspection” system for hospitals, care homes and doctors’ surgeries.

Announcing the review, Hunt condemned the examples of poor care that have surfaced in the past, such as patients being neglected and abused at Mid-Stafford NHS Foundation Trust and Winterbourne View Hospital.

He said greater transparency about how institutions perform is essential to improving care, starting with the ‘friends and family test’ which will be rolled out across the NHS.

“That’s the closest measure we can get to “care as you would wish to be cared for”. And we will publish the results. But we need to do more,” Hunt said.

“As an MP I know how well each school in my constituency is doing thanks to independent and thorough Ofsted inspections.

"But because the CQC only measures whether minimum standards have been reached, I do not know the same about hospitals and care homes.”

The Ofsted system ranks schools as ‘inadequate’, ‘satisfactory’, ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.

A star-rating system for the NHS was introduced under Labour. This was abolished in 2005, and replaced with an ‘annual health check’ from the then-Healthcare Commission (now the CQC), which was abolished by the present government.

Hunt said he was not advocating a return to the old star ratings – “but the principle that there should be an easy to understand, independent and expert assessment of how well somewhere is doing relative to its peers must be right,” he added.

The independent study will look at how this might be achieved in a way that “does not increase bureaucracy” and produces clear simple results that the public can understand.

Hunt has asked for recommendations by the end of March 2013.