The Benefits of ISO 9001:2015 Certification for Care Homes and Home Care Providers

The adoption of this standard within an organization helps to improve your existing quality controls and the overall performance of the organization, minimising risk and providing a foundation for staff and service development ensuring continual improvement.

The standard has been used successfully by Care Home, Home Care, Community Health Service and Third Sector Community Services to help them to manage risk and compliance with the full range of requirements that they need to meet.

The CQC Annual Report 2019 includes 2 Key priorities relevant to Health & Social Care providers:

• To encourage improvement, innovation and sustainability in care.

• To promote a single shared view of Quality Regulators and Commissioners now have a shared view of what good quality care looks like.

The CQC Objectives for 2019-20 include:

• Increasing the number of providers achieving a CQC 'Good' or 'Outstanding' rating and reducing the number of providers in special measures.

• This can be achieved by using the ISO 9001:2015 standard to establish processes in line with the CQC Standards of Quality and Safety and the Health & Social Care Act by monitoring, reporting  and internally auditing the processes.

• Confidential NQA ISO 9001:2015 audits – give owners and managers piece of mind on their compliance status not just with the requirements of the standard but with overlapping CQC and Care Act requirements.

What can ISO 9001:2015 certification do for my organization?

The ISO 9001:2015 standard has at its core well lead, risk based, customer centred provision of high quality services, which are the core principles of all health & social care provision.

The argument for ISO 9001:2015 certification to act as a structure for policies, procedures, monitoring and measurement within services has never been stronger as services are asked to meet every changing, more demanding, statutory and regulatory requirements and are having to bid for service provision against other competing services.

Being certificated to an internationally recognised and independently assessed quality standard that is recognised by the CQC and Commissioners is a definite advantage.

The standard is applicable to all health and social care providers across the UK and internationally and will help the care provider implement the structure to comply with legal, regulatory and local policy requirements including the requirements of the following regulatory organizations:

• The Care Quality Commission CQC

• The Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales CSSIW

• The Healthcare Inspectorate Wales HIW

• Healthcare Improvement Scotland HIS

• The Healthcare Environment Inspectorate Scotland HEIS

• The Regulatory and Quality Improvement Authority Northern Ireland RQIA

• The Medicines and Healthcare Regulation Authority MHRA

• NICE National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

There are direct correlations between the requirements of ISO 9001:2015 and the requirements of the following:

If you think ISO 9001:2015 certification may help your organization manage its compliance challenges and improvement processes contact NQA now to arrange a Gap Analysis. 

NQA offers ISO 9001 Quality Management training, to find out more click here.