Latest developments
8 December 2009 quality and safety standards guidance
The Care Quality Commission published its essential quality and safety standards guidance for health and social care providers, placing "the views and experiences of people at the centre of the regulatory system".
29 October 2009: inclusion of patient experience
The Department of Health published its Response to the March 2009 consultation on draft Regulations for the framework for the registration of health and adult social care providers. This document describes the changes made to the draft Regulations following the consultation process.
As called for by Picker Institute Europe, Regulation 10 on assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision has been amended so that providers must now "regularly seek the views (including the descriptions of their experiences of care and treatment) of service users, persons acting on their behalf" and must "have regard to" these in their overall management of quality.
The amended draft regulations are now awaiting Parliamentary approval.
25 March 2009
The Department of Health published a document entitled Response to consultation on the framework for the registration of health and adult social care providers and consultation on draft Regulations .
The Picker Institute Europe's March 2009 
consultation response argues for strengthening the two draft regulations that are most relevant to the experience and engagement of service users. Specific recommendations are that:
- draft regulation 8, 'assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision', should be amended to require service providers to 'regularly seek' and to 'have regard to' the experiences of service users
- draft regulation 15, 'respecting and involving service users', should be amended to remove the phrase 'so far as is reasonably practicable', to ensure that providers' commitments to key aspects of quality care are not watered down.
