What is CQC Regulation 17?
Last updated
Regulation 17 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 — 'Good governance' — requires CQC-registered providers to operate effective systems for quality and risk, and to maintain an accurate, complete and contemporaneous record for every service user. It's the regulation clinic documentation practices are most often judged against.
The record-keeping clause is the one clinics feel daily: every patient must have a record that is accurate, complete and contemporaneous — written close enough to the event to be reliable. Notes batched days later, or thinned to a line by time pressure, are exactly what the wording targets. The governance clauses require you to be able to show your systems work: that you assess and monitor quality, and act on what you find.
Two practical implications for clinic AI. Documentation tools help with the contemporaneous requirement — notes drafted from the consultation itself, finished the same session, rather than reconstructed at 9pm (see pyjama time). And the 'assess and monitor' duty is what a documentation audit evidences — reviewing records against standards and acting on the gaps, which AI now makes possible across 100% of notes rather than a sample.
Not every private clinic is CQC-registered — registration depends on which regulated activities you provide. But Regulation 17's record standard is a sensible benchmark even for unregistered practices, because it mirrors what professional bodies and insurers expect anyway.