Citizens have a right to the comparative care quality data, information and knowledge they need to assess the quality of health and social care that is available to them. These publications in the series “Which Health and Social Care location?” Rankings of Regulated Health and Social Care locations in England” responds to that need.

It analyses Care Quality Commission (CQC) data over the year to November 2016 to present a league table of Health and Social Care locations ranked on the basis of their CQC care quality ratings: Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement and Inadequate. Health and Social Care Locations are first ranked on the basis of Overall CQC ratings, followed by ranking for each of the 5 key questions: (Safe, Caring, Responsive, Effective, Well-led). This builds on CQC’s own ratings, which are specific to individual Health and Social Care Locations. This way, comparisons between health and social care locations enable citizen quality choices in selecting health and social care offers.

In summary, the work finds that, although most locations provide people with care rated by CQC as “Good”, a significant proportion of health and social care locations requiring improvement or rated inadequate is significant, particularly in the area of leadership and safety. Locations rated outstanding are very few but demonstrate how high quality standards can be attained.

Twenty-two per cent of all locations were rated overall as inadequate or required improvement and only 0.04 % of the locations were rated outstanding. The overall ratings across all locations was 3 % outstanding, 76% good, 18 % required improvements and 3 % inadequate.