The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has revealed that practices which have taken part in the RCGP’s practice accreditation and the quality practice awards will not automatically gain CQC registration.

The news came after the RCGP announced that more than 150 practices had signed up to its practice accreditation award programme.

The schemes were developed in partnership with the CQC and practices that have taken part will be able to ‘state with confidence’ that they comply with the CQC’s essential standards, the RCGP said.

However, the CQC has made clear it did not require practices to have achieved either of the RCGP quality programmes to be able to register in April 2013.

The regulator said the schemes would be valuable when identifying risks and would help it to target its activity and ‘reduce the burden on providers’.

The CQC confirmed that practices could use the schemes as evidence for their declaration of compliance. However, the regulator said it would not require such evidence from ‘the vast majority of GP practices’.

The CQC said: ‘Basing our judgments on information from just one source is inappropriate, as it does not take into account other valuable information available about the quality of a primary medical service.’