In most cases, our inspection reports include ratings. These can help you to compare services and make choices about care.
There are four ratings that we give to health and social care services: outstanding, good, requires improvement and inadequate.
Outstanding
The service is performing exceptionally well.
Good
The service is performing well and meeting our expectations.
Requires improvement
The service is not performing as well as it should and we have told the service how it must improve.
Inadequate
The service is performing badly and we've taken action against the person or organisation that runs it.
What do we give ratings to?
We normally give a rating for each of our five key questions. We also give the service an overall rating.
In inspections of acute hospitals, specialist mental health services and community health services, we give a rating for each of the five key questions for each of the core services we inspect.
Services we have not rated
We do not give ratings to dental practices. There are also some services for which we have not published ratings yet but which we plan to rate in the future. Find out more about services we have not rated.
Displaying ratings
By law, care providers have to display the ratings we give them. They must display them in the places where they provide care, somewhere that people who use their services can easily see them. This might be the main entrance to a hospital or the waiting area of a GP surgery.
They must also show their ratings on their website, if they have one.