We generally rate NHS 111, GP out-of-hours and urgent care services at two levels.
Level 1: A rating for each of the key questions for the location or service.
Level 2: An overall rating for the service. This will be an aggregated rating informed by our findings at level 1.
The following example shows how the two levels work together:
Where a primary care service is part of an NHS or foundation trust, we will also rate the trust at provider level and this rating is based on an aggregation of all ratings for the provider.
You will usually receive a separate report and rating for each of your locations that provide GP out-of-hours and urgent care services. If you provide an NHS 111 service, we will usually report on all of your NHS 111 services in one report and give one rating. Where necessary, we will work closely with you to ensure we report and rate at an appropriate level. For example, if you provide NHS 111 services at geographically dispersed sites across England, it may not make sense to have one report and one rating covering all of the sites.
Sometimes, we won’t be able to award a rating. This could be because:
- the service is new
- we don’t have enough evidence
- the service has recently been reconfigured, such as being taken over by a new provider
In these cases, we will use the term ‘inspected but not rated’.
We may also suspend a rating at any level. For example, we may have identified significant concerns which, after reviewing but before a full assessment, lead us to re-consider our previous rating. In this case, we would suspend our rating and then investigate the concerns.