The National Health Service (Quality Accounts) Amendment Regulations 2012

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

These Regulations amend the National Health Service (Quality Accounts) Regulations 2010 (“the principal Regulations”).

They make amendments to the principal Regulations which are consequential on amendments made to the National Health Service Act 2006, the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 and the Health Act 2009 by the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (“the 2012 Act”). In particular, given that Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities are abolished by the 2012 Act, references to them are removed from the principal Regulations. Regulation 8 inserts a substitute regulation 8 into the principal Regulations to provide that providers must send copies of their draft quality accounts to the National Health Service Commissioning Board or a clinical commissioning group, with the exact body that the draft quality accounts should be sent to identified in accordance with the substitute regulation 8; and regulation 8 also inserts a substitute regulation 9 into the principal Regulations to require the draft quality accounts to be sent by a provider to any Local Healthwatch organisation in the local authority area in which the provider is located.

Regulation 9 of these Regulations inserts a new regulation 12 into the principal Regulations to require providers to have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State in relation to quality accounts.

Regulation 10 of these Regulations amends regulation 4 of, and the Schedule to, the principal Regulations to provide that where National Health Service trusts and NHS foundation trusts are under a duty to publish quality accounts, Part 2 of those quality accounts must contain certain additional specified information.