Using professional judgement
To ensure that we make consistent decisions, we follow a set of 16 ratings principles and apply professional judgement when rating services, locations and providers. Our ratings must be proportionate to all available evidence and the specific facts and circumstances.
If we identified concerns in the inspection we’ll consider the following criteria and use our professional judgement to decide whether to depart from the application of the ratings principles - particularly where we need to aggregate ratings that range from inadequate through to outstanding:
- The extent and impact of the concerns on people who use services and the risk to quality and safety, taking into account the type of setting and the population group. If concerns have a very limited impact on people, it may reduce the impact on the aggregation of ratings.
- Our confidence in the service to address the concerns.
We cannot predict what future models of care and configurations of services will look like, so we have based our approach to aggregation on these principles to enable us to be flexible and respond to change.
The inspection report will explain in detail how we reached the rating decision.