Residential establishments, unlike hospitals, can easily be closed, or sold, and reopened with a new identity.
Private Eye reported in November 2015 that most of the 34 homes closed during
Cynthia Bower's tenure after failing their inspection later reopened with a new name or under new ownership, but with similar problems. The campaigning charity
Compassion in Care told the magazine that if a home changed name or ownership it was then listed by the CQC as "new services" and "uninspected", and there was no link to reports on the same establishment under different ownership, even if the new owners were linked to the previous owners, and there was no follow-up inspection if problems had been identified. They had found 152 homes re-registered as new, when they had only changed owner or name. The commission had identified safety concerns in more than 40% of the homes it had inspected, and 10% were rated as inadequate. In April 2016, it was reported that 44% of care homes in the South East inspected over an 18-month period were rated as inadequate or requiring improvement. Only 0.9% of the 1200 homes inspected were rated as outstanding. In September 2016 the CQC said that 40% of nursing homes in the country were rated as "requiring improvement" or "inadequate". It is a legal requirement for homes to clearly display their CQC ratings on their websites, but a July 2017 survey carried out by
Which? found that 27% of care homes surveyed either completely failed to display them or placed them where they were very difficult to find. the CQC rated almost 3,000 out of 14,975 care homes in England as inadequate or needing improvement. The care home Horncastle House was closed by CQC in September 2018 as an urgent enforcement action to protect residents. In November 2018 the CQC had rated 1% of adult social care providers as inadequate, 17% as requiring improvement, 79% as good and 3% as outstanding in that year. A 2021 review of 20 care homes in England found that a good or outstanding CQC rating was associated with a better
quality of life for residents. High staff wages were linked with better CQC ratings, and short-staffed homes were linked with worse CQC ratings.
Criticism Michelle Fenwick, the director of Heritage Healthcare Franchising, complained in December 2019 that the fees charged to home care providers, which are proposed to be based on the number of clients supported, were unfair and the service was poor. It could take more than four months for a new service to be registered. She complained that assessments were too subjective. The commission has also been accused of being a barrier to innovation and impeding a shift to digital services because they insisted on paper records, and there were claims that some inspectors did not understand electronic records.
Winterbourne View Winterbourne View was a private hospital at
Hambrook,
South Gloucestershire, owned and operated by Castlebeck. It was exposed in a
Panorama investigation into
physical and
psychological abuse suffered by people with
learning disabilities and
challenging behaviour, first broadcast in 2011. One senior nurse had reported his concerns directly to CQC, but his complaint was not taken up. The public funded hospital was shut down as a result of the abuse that took place.
Cynthia Bower, then the chief executive of the commission, resigned ahead of a critical government report in which Winterbourne View was cited.
Ash Court Ash Court is a residential
nursing home for the elderly in London, operated by
Forest Healthcare. In April 2012
hidden camera footage was broadcast in a BBC
Panorama exposé which showed an elderly woman being physically assaulted at Ash Court by a male carer and mistreated by four others. The standard of care at the nursing home had been rated "excellent." The victim was an 81-year-old woman with
Alzheimer's disease and severe
arthritis. Although the commission's primary function is to enforce national standards including safeguarding the vulnerable and "enabling them to live free from harm, abuse and neglect" the CQC responded by stating that they "should not be criticised for failing to protect people from harm" and could not be expected to spot abuse "which often takes place behind closed doors".
Whorlton Hall Whorlton Hall is a private hospital in County Durham which had previously been owned by the same company as Winterbourne View. An undercover investigation by the BBC Panorama programme found evidence that vulnerable clients with autism or learning difficulties were physically and verbally abused by staff. Patients were also physically restrained. The current owners of the service, Cygnet, have stated that all patients have now been transferred to other hospitals. The service had been visited at least 100 times by official agencies in the year before the abuse was found out, including visits by the Care Quality Commission, Durham council and local NHS bodies. It has since been closed. A former CQC inspector Barry Stanley-Wilkinson has alleged that he had raised concerns about a "very poor culture" at the service in 2015. Stanley-Wilkinson said that he worked at the CQC for a decade and that this was the only report he had written which was not published. In response the CQC stated that reports went through a "rigorous peer review process" and the draft report "did not raise any concerns about abusive practice". They also said: "We are in the process of commissioning a review into what we could have done differently or better in our regulation of Whorlton Hall and these allegations will be fully investigated as part of this. We will update on the progress and findings of this review in our Public Board meetings." On 10 June 2019, the CQC released a previously unpublished report from 2015 on the service where it was given a rating of "requires improvement". Ten workers have been arrested by Durham Police and have been questioned about the alleged abuse and neglect of the patients. ==Primary care==