CQC Invites Providers To Comment On Proposed Changes To Fee Payment Scheme

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is encouraging providers and the bodies that represent them to help shape the changes it has to introduce to the fee payment scheme that underpins its regulatory model.

CQC has to change the fees it charges health and adult social care providers in order to be regulated. This is necessary to meet the Government’s requirement for regulators, like CQC to recover their ‘chargeable costs’ in full from the fees that providers have to pay in order to be able to provide health and adult social care in England.

While the changes will differ across the different types of health and adult social care services, CQC is asking providers to give their feedback on whether the rate of the changes to ‘full cost recovery’ should take place over two or four years, starting from 1 April 2016.

This is as part of a public consultation.

David Behan, Chief Executive of the Care Quality Commission, said:

“Our commitment is to make sure that people receive safe, effective, compassionate and high-quality care and we can see that our new inspection model is allowing us to support providers to do exactly that. The fees providers pay enables this important work to happen.

“We are required to move to full cost recovery and are consulting on how we do this. We recognise the financial pressures faced by many providers, and do not underestimate the impact of any changes to their fees. We developed our proposals with an expert panel; including representatives from the providers we regulate.

“We are committed to ensuring that we continue to monitor the costs of our regulatory work closely, as well as seek to improve our efficiency, evaluate our effectiveness and demonstrate the value of our approach to the public, as taxpayers and as people who use services, and to the sectors we regulate.

“We welcome feedback on these proposals.”
The consultation runs until noon on 15 January 2016.  After this, CQC will review all responses and make recommendations to the Secretary of State, who is responsible for making the final decision about fees payments, and whose consent is required in order for the scheme to come into effect. CQC expects to publish the final fees scheme in March 2016, for implementation on 1 April 2016.