Coronavirus (COVID-19) Statement – 13 March

In light of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, we’ve been assessing what its impact will be on our programme of work and how we amend our plans accordingly.

Whilst our role of checking whether standards in healthcare are being met is always important, we will take a balanced, risk-based approach to our work over the coming weeks.

This process is aimed at ensuring that we continue to deliver our work programme in a proportionate way, taking account of:

• Any government guidance and potential restrictions on activities or travel
• Patient safety, including the risk of virus transmission caused by our inspection activities
• The welfare of our own staff
• The burden of any activities we conduct, at a time when healthcare services are under considerable pressure.

We have put arrangements in place to consider, on a rolling basis, whether each future inspection should go ahead and what other changes we may need to make to our planned work.

This may mean that we have to postpone inspections, delay ongoing review work or change the focus of where, when and how we inspect.

We will make service providers aware of any change to our announced work programme at the earliest opportunity.

We will continue to consider official advice and to reassess our decisions if the situation changes.

Please read our updated statement here.