Stricter rules and powers will help prevent another NHS scandal, says CQC chief

England’s healthcare regulator will be able to root out potential repeats of the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal by enhancing its powers to scrutinise services, its chief executive has claimed.

David Behan, the chief executive of the Care Quality Commission, said that stricter requirements for registration coupled with increased surveillance through tougher inspections would allow the regulator to identify potential risks more quickly.1

In a speech at the Commissioning in Healthcare conference in London on 8 October, Behan acknowledged that there had been “a lot of controversy” about what the regulator’s role was and said that this had …