We use people’s experiences of care to help us decide when, where and what we inspect.
We encourage people to share their experience with us so that we can understand and act on them. This includes through our national ‘Tell us about your care’ partner charities.
We also work in partnership with a range of local and regional groups. We share publicly available information with these groups and ask them to share information with us.
As well as clinical commissioning groups, where NHS services are provided by independent health providers under contract, our Inspectors and Inspection Managers will be in regular contact with people from the relevant:
- local Healthwatch
- overview and scrutiny committees
- independent NHS complaints advocacy services
- voluntary and community sector organisations (particular those representing people whose voices are seldom heard)
- local authorities
- independent mental health advocacy services
- independent Mental Capacity Act advocacy services
Where appropriate, we also work with:
- parliamentarians
- schools
- police, fire services and local medical committees
- coroners
- environmental health teams
- equality groups
Responding to information of concern
We will respond to all information we receive that is a potential cause for concern and will consider any associated risks. We may discuss this information with you either at our next planned relationship management meeting or at the next inspection, or we may consider carrying out a focused inspection.