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25th October
2005
REVIEW OF CARE HOME REGULATION
‘A DAMP SQUIB’, SAYS RNHA
OPPORTUNITY MISSED TO FOCUS ON HEALTH OUTCOMES
FOR PATIENTS RATHER THAN ADMINISTRATION
AND BUREAUCRACY
Something of
a damp squib is how the Registered Nursing Home Association (RNHA)
describes the Department of Health’s consultation document
on proposed changes to regulations governing adult social care services,
including care homes.
According to the RNHA, the government’s proposals fail completely
to address the key issue of national minimum care standards, which
most nursing home operators believe are too narrowly focused on
administrative processes at the expense of health outcomes for patients.
The association claims that when just over a year ago the then minister
for the community, Dr Stephen Ladyman, announced a review of the
regulations and standards, it was widely assumed from the words
used that it would be a root and branch analysis of what needed
to be changed and that some of the more ‘bizarre’ standards
would be ditched.
Commented RNHA chief executive officer Frank Ursell: “There
is a lot of disappointment among the providers of care to older
people that the government has just tinkered around the edges of
regulation by confining the current consultation more or less to
the frequency of inspections.”
He added : “Our expectation had been that the government would
come up with clear proposals for modifying the existing minimum
care standards so that they concentrate more on the delivery of
health care rather than on paperwork and business matters. We believe
this would have been beneficial to patients.
“From all that we had heard from the Commission for Social
Care Inspection, we believed that at long last we would be seeing
genuine movement from a set of standards about processes to a set
which are about outcomes. Unfortunately, it appears that there is
going to be a long delay before the Department of Health gets round
to this crucially important task. It is disappointing to say the
least.”
In the past, the RNHA has consistently highlighted the problem that
only around one fifth of the 246 individual care standards relate
to the actual nursing and health care provided to nursing home patients.
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