Care Quality Commission (CQC)

Care Quality Commission (CQC)

The CQC is the independent regulator of health and social care in England. This API provides access to inspection data, ratings, and provider information.

Data Model

• Provider — An organisation registered with CQC (e.g. an NHS Trust, a care home operator). Has an organisationId, name, and links to its locations.
• Location — A specific care setting (e.g. a hospital, care home, GP surgery). Has inspection ratings, address, service types, and regulatory status.
• Inspection — Assessment of a location against five key questions: Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive, Well-led.

Ratings

CQC rates services on a four-point scale:

• Outstanding — The service is performing exceptionally well
• Good — The service is performing well and meeting expectations
• Requires improvement — The service is not performing as well as it should
• Inadequate — The service is performing badly and action is taken

Key Fields

• organisationId — Unique provider ID (e.g. "1-101")
• locationId — Unique location ID (e.g. "1-123456789")
• registrationStatus — Active, Deregistered, etc.
• type — Service type (e.g. "Social Care Org", "NHS Healthcare Organisation")
• inspectionDirectorate — Which CQC directorate oversees the provider

Gotchas

• Pagination uses page (1-indexed) and perPage (max 500).
• Provider IDs have a prefix format like "1-101" or "1-123456789".
• The API requires a subscription key via the Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key header.