Top ten CQC Inspection Checklist for care homes

The preparation for a CQC inspection starts from the day after the last inspection. Quality assurance in a care home should be an ongoing and robust process. You should never take your eye off the ball. A care home in Nottingham deteriorated their rating from Outstanding to Inadequate in one year time. The most common reasons for a rapid decline would be a change of leadership or lack of provider monitoring. I would love to give you more than a thousand tips, but to start with here are the top ten CQC inspection checklist for care homes:

1. Check with your Manager if they have any intention to change the job before the next inspection? Avoid a change of Manager just before the inspection unless it is a worst-case scenario.
2. Make sure your care plans are reflecting the actual needs of the residents. For example, if one your resident suffers from a chest infection, make sure you have a short term care plan for chest infection in place.
3. Review your accident and incident folders to see if there are any patterns. The Manager should investigate all the individual cases as a standard practice. The care plan must be updated to reflect the accident form and write down the measures you have put in place to prevent it from happening again.
4. Do an observation of how your staff communicates with each other and with the residents. The staff should show empathy, dignity and respect. CQC will not even consider your Outstanding evidence if they observe the communication skills need to be improved. Behavioural change takes a long time, start now.
5. Check all your safeguarding investigations. Make sure the paperwork is all kept together, including the notifications to CQC. Check if you have updated the care plans about the incident and measures to prevent.
6. Check your staff understanding of MCA, DOLs, Safeguarding and whistleblowing. All of your staff must be able to answer it at least a simple explanation. Make it fun learning together. (They do not have to learn the complex regulations).
7. Conduct residents, relatives, staff and professionals feedback surveys well early to address the issues even before the inspection happens. CQC will love to see if you have made some improvement after the survey.
8. Interview your staff one by one to do a ‘temperature check’. If they do not open up to you, get a third party to do it. You want to make sure all the staff are happy about your leadership. Remember, CQC will ask the questions you were reluctant to ask your team, as you feared an unpleasant response.
9. Do a Key Line of Enquiry Audit (KLOE) yourself. If you do not do it yourselves, you will never learn it. If you do not make an effort to learn it, how can you monitor the compliance in your care home on an ongoing basis?
10. Check if you are breaching any CQC regulations. If yes, put the correction plan in place as soon as possible. Breaches of regulations will not take you anywhere near an outstanding rating

Remember, this Top Ten CQC Inspection Checklist will only work if they are applied. We believe that every one deserves outstanding care when sick. So by applying and sharing these tips to every one, at your care home and to others, you are contributing in raising the quality of care in England.

Check out my book to learn more about what to do before, during and after the inspection.

I wish you all the success for your next CQC inspection.

Issac Theophilos