Acute trusts will get longer to check the data in the Care Quality Commission’s Intelligent Monitoring Tool before it is made public under a series of changes due to be announced by the regulator today.
Historic whistleblowing concerns and old alerts relating to mortality and maternity will no longer be included while additional indicators have been added from the maternity services survey and the Myocardial Ischaemia National Audit.
Mortality alerts are triggered by higher than expected mortality for a number of conditions while maternity alerts are sparked by unusually high levels of caesarean sections or maternal sepsis.
HSJ understands the CQC is writing to all affected chief executives informing them of the changes.
Acute providers will then receive the next batch of intelligent monitoring reports in the middle of February, up to a month before they are published.
Trusts were given the first tranche of intelligent monitoring reports just days before they were published in October last year.
HSJ understands this change is being made in response to feedback from trusts that they did not have long enough to check the data in it.
The reports contain data on around 150 indicators for all NHS acute hospitals and replace the quality and risk profiles previously used by the CQC.
Trusts are divided into six levels of risk depending on their performance against the indicators.
All the indicators are weighted the same and given either no risk, risk or elevated risk depending on a statistical analysis of how the trust is performing compared to other organisations.
The only exception is for the whistleblowing indicator; where a staff member or patient has raised concerns with the CQC that is automatically counted as an elevated risk.
In the first batch of reports 119 out of 161 trusts had a risk for whistleblowing.
HSJ understands historic whistleblowing concerns and alerts will no longer be included if the regulator is satisfied trusts are addressing them.
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