With initial teething problems mostly ironed out, Ian Lloyd provides a detailed update on the CQC’s new provider portal and what it means for you.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has launched a new provider portal that was due to go live in February. Prior to the launch, communications from the CQC were keen to stress that the launch would be phased to ensure that any issues arising could be ironed out. As is often the case with IT product launches the portal proved to be problematic for providers and the launch was pushed back to March.
Once opened, providers encountered ongoing difficulties registering on the site. Those that managed to register faced problems when attempting to submit registration applications.
My role at Dentistry Compliance powered by Apolline is partly as CQC registrations manager, meaning I had first-hand experience of the difficulties. The portal would not allow me to select any of the three regulated activities associated with opening a new dental practice, namely:
- Diagnosis and screening
- Treatment of disease, disorder and injury
- Surgical procedures.
Following significant difficulties with the portal, on 16 April, the CQC announced via email they were aware of problems with the new portal and were going to permit paper/email registration applications until further notice.
On 3 June, the CQC sent an email to all providers apologising for their ‘poor experience’ of the new portal. The email said they recognised how ‘frustrating the experience has been’ for the 12,000 providers who have already set up an account to enable the submission of registrations and notifications.
There is a dedicated support team for provider portal queries and issues that can be reached via email at [email protected].
Creating a portal account
To create a portal account, you need to be either a registered manager, a nominated individual, or a main partner for a CQC registered provider. You will need to use an email address that is registered with CQC and not shared with another registered person.
Once the account has been created, nominated individuals can delegate access to other people within their organisation as long as the person they are delegating to is not a registered manager.
The provider portal is ready to accept registration applications, so you should use this. From 7 June, the CQC will only accept registration applications via the portal. Paper/email applications will no longer be accepted.
What can be done in the new provider portal?
The aim of the new provider portal is for all new registrations, amendments to existing registrations, and all notifications to be made online through the portal. To that end, there have been a number of recent improvements:
- You can now save notification forms as a draft midway through completion and come back to them later
- You can see all your notification history
- Nominated individuals can delegate access to others in their organisation so they can complete notifications.
Notifications
You can submit the following notifications through the provider portal:
- SN16: Death of a person using the service
- SN17: Death of a detained mental health patient
- SN18: Allegations of abuse
- SN18: Events that stop a service running safely or properly
- SN18: Serious injury to a person using a service.
You can complete the following registration activity through the provider portal:
- Register as a new provider
- Register as a new manager
- Cancel your provider registration
- Cancel your manager registration.
