The inspection team: NHS trusts

Each inspection team is led by a member of CQC’s staff and includes specialist professional advisors such as clinicians and pharmacists.

Where appropriate, an inspection team will also include Experts by Experience. These are people who have experienced care personally or experience of caring for someone who has received a particular type of care.

The experts who join the team reflect the type of services being inspected, the areas that we want to focus on and the nature of any concerns identified before inspection. This will also influence the size of the inspection team. An inspection team may include:

• A CQC Head of Inspection
• CQC inspectors and inspection managers
• Specialist professional advisors. These are clinical and other experts such as nurses, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, GPs, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, or health service managers. We will also include specialist professional advisors with appropriate experience of organisational leadership and governance to support our trust-level inspections of well-led, such as relevant directors and heads of governance.
• Mental Health Act Reviewers
• Experts by Experience
• CQC inspection team support staff (where appropriate).

Where we are carrying out the trust-level inspection of the well-led key question, we will also include:

• Specialist professional advisors with appropriate experience of organisational leadership, governance and finance, such as relevant directors and heads of governance.
• Staff from NHS Improvement, to assess financial and resource governance in the trust.

We will only carry out a comprehensive inspection of all core services in exceptional circumstances, but for larger inspections, an inspection team may also include an Inspection Chair (a senior clinician, or director level leader).