What are Special Measures?
Special measures came into effect from April 2015.
The purpose of these 'measures' by CQC is to ensure that practices that are found to be inadequate are not allowed to carry on unless they fix the problem. So how does this work?
- Practices will be given a fixed time for improvement and will be re-inspected within the following 6 months. If there is insufficient improvement, the practice will be put into special measures.
- If however the CQC think that the problems are significant enough to cause risk to patients, or the provider will not be able to sort them out themselves, they will be put into special measures straight away.
- After this, the provider will have a maximum of 6 months to fix the problems, else proceedings will commence to cancel their licence to trade.
A provider can be put into special measures AND also be subject to other enforcement action at the same time.