CHRE Performance review report 2011-12 - Professional Standards ...

7.10 Continuing fitness to practise will continue to be underpinned by CPD whichever
approach is taken, and we welcome the efforts the regulators are making across
the board to improve CPD’s effectiveness and registrants’ compliance with it. We
look forward to monitoring ongoing developments and reviewing progress in next
year’s performance review.
Registration
7.11 We are pleased to see: regulators continuing to improve the accessibility of their
registers and the level of information about registrants’ current and historic fitness
to practise status shown on the registers; the ongoing development of online
methods to make registration a quicker, more straightforward and timely process;
and increased audit of registration processes and decisions, leading to
improvements in performance. It is important that the public can trust the integrity
and accuracy of the information on the regulators’ registers, so we support steps
being taken to ensure this, for example, the HPC’s monthly check that the register
provides accurate information about fitness to practise outcomes. We are therefore
concerned that in a number of cases our annual check of the regulators’ registers
revealed avoidable errors; however, we are assured that steps are now being taken
to address any system weaknesses.
7.12 We note that the GDC has established a registration audit team, and that the GMC
has also continued to perform registration application audits. We provide further
information on this work below in the good practice section, and in the individual
reports.
7.13 We welcome initiatives to support compliance with registration requirements, for
example, the NMC’s practice of contacting the employers of nurses whose
registration has lapsed, to remind them of their responsibility to check the
registration status of employees and prevent people working while unregistered.
We are aware, however, that there is range of different approaches taken to
dealing with lapsed registration; we intend to look more closely at this area of
practice as a project in 2012-13. We also welcome measures taken to make
registration processes more easily understood, such as producing clearer
explanations of what is involved in making an appeal against a registration
decision.
Fitness to practise
7.14 It is in fitness to practise where we have observed the greatest variation in
performance. Most of the regulators are managing their caseloads effectively,
supported by robust case management systems. In the case of the GMC and the
HPC, this is being achieved by regulators who are working in highly complex
environments and throughout a period of major change. The GMC has maintained
its performance during a time of substantial process reform; similarly the HPC has
maintained its performance while preparing for the transfer of the regulation of
social workers in England (who will become the H(C)PC’s largest registrant group)
5 . In general, we note that the most effective regulators in this area challenge their
fitness to practise models and processes and explore alternatives, in order to
5 The Health Professions Council will become the Health and Care Professions Council later this
year as a result of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
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