HOSPITAL inspections carried out by Jersey’s care watchdog will not result in specific “ratings” or scores, but will instead produce reports highlighting areas that need improvement.
Jersey Care Commission’s chief inspector, Becky Sherrington, has provided details of laws that will make regular inspections of the General Hospital compulsory.
Updating the Health Advisory Board, she said: “We aren’t going to be rating the Hospital. As a care regulator, we won’t be providing a judgment but we will be providing a report.”
Environment Minister Steve Luce is currently consulting on legislation that would require the JCC to inspect hospital as well as ambulance services.
Currently, the Royal College of Physicians is one of several bodies that conducts reviews of hospital services – but there is no legal provision for this. A second consultation on the issue, led by the JCC, and looks at the framework it will use in its inspections.
Some questions remained open, Ms Sherrington said, including whether the Hospital would be inspected as a whole or department-by-department, and whether inspections would be announced or not.
Speaking to the board, she said the inspections would involve “a blended model”, with UK and Jersey inspectors.
The standards proposed by the JCC are based on standards from the Care
Quality Commission – which inspects and regulates health and social care in England – but with some Jersey-specific considerations, such as air transport of patients.
Ms Sherrington explained that the CQC had been picked above the Welsh and Scottish regulators as it had recently updated its standards.
Carolyn Downs, a non-executive director on the board – who is currently acting as chair – said she expected the board to publish its response to the consultation.
She added that she would welcome the additional oversight in Jersey.
On the regulator not using specific scores or ratings, she said: “We have seen the tragic outcomes of that in the UK, so well done to Jersey for being more sophisticated than that.”
Cathy Stone, the nursing and midwifery lead on the HCS change team, said the regulation was “the right thing to do”.
Ms Sherrington added that she expected the law to be ready by the end of 2024, and that organisations would then have a six-month period to register, meaning they would need to be ready for inspection from the end of June 2025.
