CGC Toolkit

Copy of an email distributed 20 May 2011 

The BMA has today (Friday 20 May 2011), launched a toolkit to help guide family doctors through Care Quality Commission (CQC) registration. However, it has serious concerns about the workload burden for practices.

Every GP practice in England will need to be registered with the CQC by April 2012 and practices are being invited to register from October 2011 onwards.

In order to help GPs prepare, the BMA’s GPs Committee has produced a plain English explanation of CQC registration, providing information on applying and including a step-by-step guide to what GPs should do to meet the CQC’s standards.

Commenting on the guidance Dr Laurence Buckman, Chairman of the BMA’s GPs Committee, said:

“The BMA is supportive of the idea of CQC registration and we’ve been working closely with the CQC on this. We have launched this toolkit to help guide GPs through registration but, nevertheless, we have serious concerns about the current process. The CQC’s expectations for demonstrating compliance are unrealistic. They will be a huge administrative burden and will end up taking GPs away from seeing patients; the self-assessment form is too complicated and the nature of the questions means that GPs are likely to feel like they are taking part in a creative writing exercise, which is not the correct way to demonstrate compliance.

“We will be urging the CQC to make the process simpler and to make further changes. So in the mean time I would urge GPs to use this toolkit to collect their thoughts, but we would advise them not to start significant work on demonstrating compliance. Equally, at this stage, practices should not employ third parties to do the work for them. Registration is important but it is just as important that the workload is reasonable and appropriate.”

Ends

Notes to editors:

The BMA toolkit is available online here.

An audio clip going through the toolkit with the GPC’s Dr John Canning, Chairman of the Contracts and Regulation subcommittee, will also be available.

For further information please contact:

Rebecca Spargo
direct telephone: 020 7383 6174
email: rspargo@bma.org.uk 

British Medical Association
BMA House
Tavistock Square
London
WC1H 9JP

For out-of-hours press enquiries telephone : 020 7383 6254
Email : pressoffice@bma.org.uk 

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