CQC report on online primary health services shows progress

Brian Kelly and Raj Gathani are quoted in a Digital Health Legal article regarding a report published by the UK’s Care Quality Commission on "The state of care in independent online primary health services." According to Kelly and Gathani, “The report illustrates some of the teething problems in the inspection system, particularly when applied to online healthcare. For example, the report concludes that last year a majority of registered online primary care providers delivered ‘unsafe’ and/or ‘ineffective’ services. This approach seems a little unsophisticated and does not do enough to distinguish genuine, high quality operators who are dealing with a developing regulatory landscape from less rigorous providers. This should be put into the context of the number of unregulated services available on the web and the risk that patients turn to those instead. That said, the report points to improved compliance by a number of providers by early 2018.”