The Care Quality Commission is trying to recruit more advisers from the independent sector to guard against the risk of ‘bias’ in the way it assesses private providers, an adviser to the regulator has said.

Chris Thompson, a national professional adviser to the CQC on the independent sector, said it was aware of the “risk of political bias” when it assesses services provided by non-NHS providers.

Earlier this year the leaders of the CQC team that inspected Hinchingbrooke Health Care Trust, formerly managed by private provider Circle, rejected claims that their inspection was biased against the independent sector.

The accusation came after the trust was rated “inadequate” in January. Before the inspection report was published, Circle issued a statement announcing plans to pull out of its 10 year Hinchingbrooke franchise and that it expected the CQC’s judgment to be “unbalanced”.

Hinchingbrooke returned to NHS management in April.

Professor Thompson said one of the steps being taken to mitigate the risks was a drive to recruit more inspection staff from the independent sector.

Speaking at the Private Healthcare Summit in London this morning, he said: “The CQC is recruiting for the very large number of inspections it is going to have to do in the near future around the independent sector.

“The reason why there’s a bulge in independent sector inspections coming up is almost all the resources of the CQC over the last couple of years has been faced towards getting the inspection regime right in the NHS.

“They definitely want people with knowledge of the independent sector to come with them on inspections as special professional advisers – they are out for recruitment now.”

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