AI-powered compliance for your practice

CQC inspects a GP practice against five key questions (safe, effective, caring, responsive, and well led) using the single assessment framework, with evidence gathered from records, staff interviews, patient feedback, and direct observation.

QOF is the voluntary but financially significant pay for performance scheme within the NHS GMS contract; practices earn points in clinical disease registers and quality improvement domains, with each point worth approximately £200 in 2024/25, making full achievement worth around £170,000 for an average list size practice.

CQC does not publish a prescribed policy list but expects practices to hold documented, dated, version controlled policies across the key domains its quality statements assess, principally: medicines management, safeguarding, infection prevention and control, significant event analysis, complaints, information governance, and chaperone and consent.

Clinical governance in a GP surgery is the system of accountability for continuously improving the quality of services and safeguarding high standards of care; the NHS requires this to be evidenced through a structured programme of significant event analysis, clinical audit, prescribing review, learning from complaints, and staff training records.

GP practices are required under NHS contract terms and CQC governance expectations to conduct a significant event analysis for every event that could have caused patient harm or that reveals a learning opportunity, document the analysis to completion, and share learning. There is no defined minimum number, but inspectors expect a sustained log with evidence of completed cycles and implemented changes.

Preparation for a CQC inspection centres on building and maintaining a complete evidence portfolio aligned to the five key questions and their quality statements, ensuring all governance processes are live and documented rather than reconstructed when the inspection is announced.