The call for a higher authority in health and social care has been recommended by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) in a new report called safer care for all, solutions from professional regulation and beyond.
The PSA was established in 2002 to monitor and improve the regulation of healthcare professionals. The PSA now supervises 10 regulators covering over 1.7 million health care professionals in the UK. The PSA has five key functions:
- Drive improvement across the regulators by undertaking annual reviews assessing their effectiveness
- Act as a safety net for fitness to practice decisions that will not protect the public sufficiently
- Through its Accredited Registers programme, raising the standards for non-statutory healthcare professionals
- Improve regulation and registration to better protect the public through research and policy development.
- Provide independent advice to the Privy Council on appointment processes for regulator council members
In their new report released in 2022, the core recommendation is to introduce a new independent role; Health and Social Care Safety Commissioner for each UK country, which acts as an overarching authority. The new role will review and monitor the whole health and social care system, identifying risks and enforcing any necessary actions required across organisations and regulators to improve Health and Social Care for the service user.
The PSA believe this new overarching role would help identify issues in relation to the four core themes of the report.
- Tackling inequalities: the new role would be able to assist to rectify the major inequalities in access to health care as well as the staffing inequalities and discrimination. The new role would allow for a bird’s eye view of the system as a whole and identify risks which differentiate across protected characteristics. As well as allowing a cross-sector review of demographic data of complaints to identify trends.
- Regulating new risks: Technological advances and move to high street or convenience provision over the traditional accesses to Health and Social Care carry their own risks. Currently, regulators are hampered by overly prescriptive legislation and a lack of powers/duty to intervene. The new role which is designed to monitor the Health and Social Care system as a whole will be able to identify emerging risks with new care practices and the way in which their delivered which is currently under evaluated.
- Workforce crisis: The Health and Social Care sector is facing a significant workforce crisis which needs to be addressed to prevent a decrease in service user care. The PSA believe a coordinated approach is needed to upskill professionals to handle the demand of new care models and provide care for all diversities. The new role should help identify risks in how a professional is regulated and the sector’s workforce shortage which in turn would assist in developing regulatory strategies.
- Accountability, fear and public safety: The PSA identifies this is a balancing act between fear of a professional against unfair blame or accusation versus individual accountability and protecting the service user. The role could assist with providing an independent mechanism for centralised coordination and public inquiry oversight. Furthermore, a review of new national approaches prior to implementation will ensure coherency and prevent existing mechanisms from being undermined.
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