Is your home care agency remote inspection ready?

Following on from a successful pilot in autumn 2020, the Care Quality Commission now employs remote inspections as a standard format for domiciliary care and extra care providers.

I first wrote about the CQC’s move toward digitisation back in July 2020. At that point in time, the regulator was consulting on its new five-year strategy – a ‘digital first’ approach that included a much heavier focus on using technology in regulation than previously seen. Proposed innovations included a digital platform for provider engagement, mobile apps to support inspection and enforcement and the use of AI in risk assessment and intelligence.

Fast forward to the present day and some of those solutions have become reality. Most notably, remote inspections.

In a remote inspection, rather than having inspectors come on-site, the CQC uses phone calls, video calls and data sharing via secure email or a secure portal (SFTP) to gather evidence and make its assessments.

We believe that having the option of a remote inspection is a welcome step forward for home care providers. We anticipate that it will reduce some of the administrative burden and disruption that typically comes with inspections. However, we recognise the need for care providers to be remote inspection ready.

Adopting good process habits early and being familiar with your care management software can go some way to reducing the worry and workload around preparing for a CQC inspection.

So with that in mind, we have produced a new industry support guide to help home care organisations prepare. The short e-book, called ‘Remote inspections: a guide for home care providers’, includes:

• some background on the CQC’s move to digital
• information about types of CQC inspections and how remote inspections fit in to the CQC’s framework
• what to expect from a remote inspection
• how to leverage technology in a remote inspection – highlighting some of the useful reports and features within a care management system which can help you provide the evidence you need
• and a handy checklist – to make sure your organisation is remote inspection-ready

‘Remote inspections’ is the first in a new series of industry guides from Unique IQ named ‘Unique insights’. We have designed the series to help care organisations harness the power of technology – so that they can better tackle some of the pressing issues facing the care sector today.

You can download a copy of the remote inspections guide for free from: https://www.uniqueiq.co.uk/remote-inspections-a-guide-for-home-care-providers/??