Care home inspections have not been "reduced to almost zero" (Letters, 31 May). They remain central to CQC's regulation of adult social care, and our inspectors regularly visit care homes.
Nor are reviews of quality predominantly based on the care home's own self-assessment. Our system is designed to enable us to spot warning signs that might indicate an emerging problem. Concerns about a care provider can come from a pattern of relatively small issues as well as from a major incident.
We gather information from a range of sources: our inspectors, people who live in care homes and their families, local authorities that commission services, health agencies, and adult safeguarding data. The decision to inspect, and how urgently, is made on our judgment of the risk of the provider's non-compliance with standards of quality and safety.
Cynthia Bower
Chief executive, Care Quality Commission