How to Provide Evidence-based Answers to the Five Key Questions (Care Homes)

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) requires assurance from care providers from registration onwards that they can deliver safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led services. The five key questions:

• is the service safe

• is it effective

• is it caring

• is it responsive

• is it well-led

are fundamental to the whole inspection process. Providers must also continue to offer legitimate evidence-based answers when contributing to their provider information collection (PIC).

The following are examples of how the key questions might be answered, though the detailed contents must always be made relevant to the individual service.