We inspect NHS and independent healthcare services in Wales to check people are receiving good care
How we inspect
Our inspections of healthcare services may be announced or unannounced.
We look at how services:
- Comply with regulations
- Meet healthcare standards
- Meet other legislation, professional standards and guidance as applicable.
We use the regulations and standards to make judgements about the quality, safety and effectiveness of healthcare services.
What happens after our inspections?
After our inspections we will:
- Write an inspection report and publish it on our website
- Require services to make improvements where necessary
- Decide if we need to take further action to follow-up on issues identified during an inspection
- Continually monitor all the information we hold about a service, from our inspections, the public, healthcare staff, healthcare services and other organisations and decide what action we need to take.
How we report
We report and publish our findings from our inspections under three themes:
- Quality of the patient experience: We speak to people about their experiences of care
- Delivery of safe and effective care: We look at how services provide high quality, safe and reliable care for patients
- Quality of Management and leadership: We look at how services are managed and led and how they check their own performance against relevant regulations, standards and guidance.
Publication Handling
We have revised our Publication Policy to set out how we manage and promote the publication of our inspection reports.
We will continue to publish reports on its website and promote them through its communications channels, including social media, on the day of publication.
Where inspection findings are considered significant, whether highlighting notable areas of good practice and improvement or identifying serious concerns or risks, we may provide information to key stakeholders and the media under embargo before publication.
This approach supports our 2026–2030 Strategy by helping us share learning more effectively, improve public awareness of our work, and ensure our findings contribute to meaningful improvements in the quality and safety of healthcare services across Wales. It also reflects our commitment to transparency and to using our independent voice to drive improvement where it matters most.