By Vernon Recreo, Client Relationship Manager
The Key Lines of Enquiry or commonly known by its acronym KLOEs, helps the CQC Inspectors probe the sources of evidence of a service provider in answering the 5 key questions: is the service safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led?What Sectors Do the CQC Inspect?
There are several sectors in the health and social care services that CQC are inspecting and monitoring. These areas include adult social care, primary care, NHS trusts, independent healthcare and specialist services.
Adult social care includes care homes, domiciliary care, specialist colleges, extra care housing, shared lives schemes and supported living services.
Primary care includes Dentists, Urgent care services including NHS 111 and GP out-of-hours services, online primary care, GPs (NHS GP practices), and independent doctors and clinics. NHS trusts on the other hand include NHS acute, ambulance, community health, mental health and substance misuse services. There are also independent healthcare services which include independent acute hospitals, ambulance services, community health services, hospices, mental health and substance misuse services.
For the specialist services, these include prisons and secure settings, sexual assault referral centres, safehouses and outreach services, children and young people and autistic people and people with a learning disability.What Questions from the KLOE’s Would the CQC Ask?
Questions on KLOEs depend on the type of service provider and areas that CQC would be inspecting. For a typical adult social care service provider, CQC would be looking at how safe are the services provided to patients – safeguarding and protection from abuse, managing risks, staff suitability, medicines management, infection control and lessons learnt.
They will be looking on how effective the services are in terms of the patient’s needs using assessment and evidence-based treatment, staff skills and workforce, nutrition requirements, overall governance and consent.
One key area that has always been a key discussion area is the person-centred care where service providers would be asked for how they treat their service users with kindness, respect and compassion, privacy and dignity and how they involve the service users in decisions about their care.
And lastly, the CQC would be looking on how the organization manage the service. They will be looking at the vision and strategy, management of the processes and staff, implementation of continual improvement and innovation; and working with other stake holdersRatings
CQC will provide ratings on each KLOE and an overall rating will be given following the inspection visit and assessment of processes and documents. The rating is usually issued 2 weeks following the inspection (remote or on-site) if there are no concerns.
The assessment process is only concluded when a Notice of Decision has been served to the applicant either agreeing the application or refusing the application. If the application has been refused, a Notice of Proposal will be issued which will outline the grounds for refusal. However, the applicant will be given the opportunity for representation or to appeal to the decision as soon as the Notice of Proposal has been issued.
By law, overall CQC Rating must be displayed in the organisation’s premises and onto their website. From the CQC-Compliance perspective, it is strongly suggested that overall rating has to be reflected equally in the documentation of the organization such as the Quality Manual.
To find out more about the Key Lines of Enquiry and how to prepare for your upcoming CQC inspection, contact us today.
