Head of Care Quality Commission Resigns

Cynthia Bower, head of the CQC has resigned. She says its time to move on (no doubt she's found a more lucrative public sector non-job somewhere else)

Not before time, as all the organisation has been doing since it's inception has been re-inventing the wheel. Or if you'd like another analogy, a spinning wheel with no traction.

Replacing already working, workable and good practices with dogmatic, unworkable regimes isn't the way to improve care, especially as it entails taking one's eye off the ball. That particular ball being actually improving and regulating the standard of care in the country.

With a number of high profile failures over its life, it was about time someone at the top went. Unfortunately I don't imagine for one second that things will improve, given the types of people employed in the higher echelons of the CQC.

Steeped in the public service culture they are about as out of touch with reality as you can possibly be. My disdain for such people stems from my dealings with them in local government, social services and other public agencies. A professional committee member is a professional committee member, even if their roots were more practical.

Heaping more and more paperwork on healthcare professionals isn't the way to improve care: all it does is take hardworking people away from the job they should be providing, it adds costs to healthcare without benefits and because paperwork is so easily managed to provide a rosy picture even in the worst run homes, it doesn't prevent poor care standards.

Its about time the CQC got it's act together and started to improve the quality and depth of it's inspections and started routing out the bad establishments that I know for a fact exist and continue to run despite (and probably because of) the CQC and its ineffective executives.

UPDATE:

The Ranting Penguin has an idea where Cynthia Bower may crop up next.