Charlotte Leslie – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Charlotte Leslie on 2014-07-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether the Care Quality Commission look at (a) current and (b) historic patient files and consent forms.

Norman Lamb

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and adult social care providers in England and has a key responsibility in the overall assurance of safety and quality of health and adult social care services.

The CQC has provided the following information.

CQC looks at current and historic patient records when appropriate in order to assess the quality and safety of services registered with it. Patient records are commonly reviewed during CQC inspections, in compliance with the Data Protection Act, to see how well care at a service is planned, delivered and reviewed, and form an integral part of judging the quality of care. In order to protect the confidentiality of people who use services, and to comply with legal requirements, CQC will only look at patient files where it has decided that it is both necessary and proportionate to do so for the purpose of CQC’s regulatory functions. This approach is set out in CQC’s Code of Practice on Confidential Personal Information and in guidance for inspectors on using CQC’s powers to access health and care records.

The Code of Practice on Confidential Personal Information is available on CQC’s website at :

www.cqc.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/20121105_code_of_practice_on_cpi.pdf