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Annual Health Check

What is the Annual Health Check?

The Annual Health Check is the system used by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to assess the performance of all NHS Trusts in England.

As part of the Annual Health Check, all NHS trusts are asked to assess their own performance against the Government’s 24 core Standards for Better Health and submit a declaration of compliance to the CQC. Trusts then have to declare this information publicly.

What is assessed?

There are two parts to the overall assessment of a trust's performance.

1. Quality of services:
   • making sure that the trust is getting the basics of healthcare right (e.g. that the trust is meeting the Government's 24 core standards on safety, clinical and cost effectiveness, governance, patient focus, accessible and responsive care, the care environment and public health)
   • checking that the trust is making and sustaining improvements in priority areas (i.e. that the trust is performing well against the Government’s national priorities for the NHS).
      
2. Use of resources (financial management)
   • checking that the trust managing its finances effectively (the assessment of financial management draws on work carried out by the Audit Commission and Monitor, the regulator of NHS foundation trusts).

How does the CQC check that these declarations are accurate?

The CQC cross-checks the declarations that trusts submit with feedback from:

• local stakeholders,
• including local involvement networks,
• local authority overview and scrutiny committees,
• strategic health authorities and,
•  the boards of governors of foundation trusts.

The CQC also uses information from other regulatory bodies, NHS patient and staff surveys, and findings from its national reviews and inspections, such as the hygiene code inspections.

The CQC will identify any trusts that they think may have incorrectly declared that they are meeting the core standards. They will then inspect these trusts, along with a randomly selected control group, to see whether the evidence they used for their declarations is appropriate.

Our 2008 / 2009 performance ratings

• Use of resources (financial management): Good
• Quality of services: Weak

View a detailed explanation of our scores (PDF 41 KB)

View our recent inspection report on infection control (PDF 41 KB)

View our detailed action plan (PDF 51 KB)

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More information from Care Quality Commission

For more information on the CQC performance ratings for NHS trusts for 2008 / 2009 please  visit the CQC website (opens in new window).

View our core standards declarations these demonstrate the Trust’s position against a number of care standards.