Concern that CHRE request for information may be unreasonable
Concern was expressed at the December
Council meeting that a performance review exercise by the Council
for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence was putting unreasonable pressure on health care regulatory bodies.
Presenting the report of a CHRE meeting on 11 November, the President
(who represents the Society on the CHRE) told the December Council meeting
that the Society had already expressed concerns about the scale of the
performance review exercise. It was being asked to do various things,
including making a response to a rather large questionnaire, which Robert
Darracott (director of corporate and strategic development) observed
would require a “van load” of information to be sent. He
had made the point that it was not reasonable to expect the regulatory
bodies to provide all the required information in detail, and the CHRE
had agreed to home in on the main headings and use the detailed questionnaire
in future years.
Linda Stone expressed concern at the tight timetable for responding to
the performance review questionnaire, which had to be returned by the
beginning of January even though it had not been in the building long.
Could the Society respond adequately within that timetable? And would
it express concern over the tightness of the timetable?
Mr Darracott said that the Society had to respond. Although the review
originally consisted of 75 questions covering everything from human resources
policy to details of fitness-to-practise procedures, the revised questionnaire
kept to the headings and did not seek detailed submissions on individual
points. The document was going round the building so that specific people
could draft responses. He added: “I think we can meet the timetable,
but it is tight.”
Mrs Stone said that she was concerned that the timetable did not allow
the Council — the Society’s governing body — to have
sight of what would be sent back on its behalf. “I do not think
there is anything we can do about it,” she said, “but I wanted
to raise that.”
Mr Darracott said that the documents submitted would simply indicate
where the Society currently stands in terms of its performance against
the objectives. They would not reflect anything that is not policy.
The President said that considerable concern had been expressed at the
CHRE meeting about the extent of information being requested. It was
pointed out that, if the regulators supplied all the information requested,
the CHRE would have difficulty coping with it all in one go. It was following
that discussion that the amount of information required was reduced considerably,
as Mr Darracott had explained.
The President added that another criticism of the CHRE was that it arranged
dates that were bound to clash with commitments of the representatives
of the health professions, who were the presidents of all the health
care regulatory bodies. For the CHRE to imagine that it could pick out
a date only two or three months ahead and get all the health care regulators
present was stretching it somewhat. The representatives were having difficulty
explaining to the CHRE that they have all sorts of other commitments
and cannot necessarily meet all the CHRE dates and deadlines. A further
difficulty was that no deputies were appointed to stand in for representative
who had other commitments.
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