Publish date: 17 October 2023
Following the Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection, we introduced changes to our QRV process to make sure QRVs continue to fully assist us to improve the quality of care we provide to our patients, service users and their carers. These changes also aim to help us prepare better for future inspections.
The additional three new Safe domain standards relate to patient harm, waiting times and caseloads and are subject to ongoing discussion. Whilst these new standards remain important and valid, we recognise that there is a need for greater understanding and clarity on what the gold standard looks like for rating and evidencing.
We want our leaders to feel better equipped to respond well to QRV standards and to engage in future changes to QRVs. Therefore, it’s been agreed that these new standards will be reviewed and redefined by senior Trust and divisional leads.
Although QRV leads will continue to ask teams to supply evidence and respond to questions in relation to the three new standards, this will be for the purpose of refining and defining exactly what’s required. Therefore, ratings for these standards will be paused and temporarily disabled (by rating them as N/A) until 1 January 2024.
Already published QRV reports which include the new Safe domain standards will be retrospectively re-rated over the coming weeks. As such, some team’s Safe domain and overall ratings may change - team leaders will be kept informed.
Alongside these changes, a record will be maintained of how the three new Safe domain standards have been rated. This will be a manual data set available for any required data analysis but it will not be accessible Trust wide.
Trust and divisional leads will be contacted to take part in these valuable ongoing discussions to make sure the clarified ratings and evidence requirements are confirmed and ready for the go live date on 1 January 2024.