Assessment through the annual health check

The Healthcare Commission is responsible for assessing the performance of all healthcare organisations and issues performance ratings for all NHS organisations each year.

This process is called the annual health check. As one component, we assess organisations’ compliance with the Department of Health’s core standards. To do this, we inspect approximately 20% of trusts each year to make sure that they meet the standards.

Three of these core standards relate to the Hygiene Code (C4a, C4c and C21). In 2006/2007, for the first time, we will assess all the trusts inspected against at least one of these standards.

The annual health check also assesses how trusts are meeting Government targets, including the target to halve rates of MRSA by 2008.

More information about the annual health check

The current programme of work builds on the experience we gained from our “Cleanliness Audit” of 2005. About 100 acute, community and mental health hospitals in the NHS and independent sectors were subject to unannounced inspections. The audit threw the spotlight on cleanliness in hospitals and identified room for improvement in two-thirds of trusts that we visited.

Efforts under the Hygiene Code will take this work to the next level. The code draws in all aspects of infection control – not only cleanliness – to affect “board to ward” responsibility for reducing rates of healthcare-associated infection and protecting the safety of patients and the public. We will provide regular progress updates on this website.

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