CQC and event medical: get your records ready.

The test is the activity, not the type of event. Hempsons reports that CQC asks whether the service treats disease, disorder or injury, whether a listed healthcare professional provides or supervises it, and whether it goes beyond urgent care or first aid.

First aid itself is out of scope. If your crews only give first aid, you may not need to register. If some go further, for example with monitoring, assessment or giving medicines, read CQC's guidance for providers of health care and treatment at events and decide which side of the line you sit on.

Registered providers must keep accurate, complete and contemporaneous records for each patient. That is Regulation 17 (Good governance), paragraph 17(2)(c). Read the regulation on the CQC site.

CQC did not write the checklist below. It is what we would want to show an inspector, a commissioner or an event organiser who asks how you oversee care.

1. One record for every patient, every time.
2. A clear author and time for each entry, including when two crew members work on one patient.
3. A fixed point where a record is finished, with the original kept intact if something is added later.
4. Written reasons for any gaps left when a record is closed.
5. Medicines recorded against your formulary: quantity, unit and route, with signatures where your policy needs them.
6. A review routine, with a note of who reviews records and what they found.
7. Controlled access, and a known retention and export arrangement.

An electronic patient care record does not register you with CQC. It helps you evidence the habits above, because they are built into the record.

• Record care offline and send changes when signal returns. Each patient at an incident gets their own record.
• Every entry keeps its author and time. A colleague joins the same record by exact incident reference.
• Before locking, clinicians see missing required fields and write a reason to finish with gaps.
• A locked record is read-only. Anything received afterwards appears as a late entry.
• Medicines are recorded against your formulary. The record shows a handover reference and PIN for the receiving team.
• Named permissions, encryption and audit logging control access.

Treatment decisions stay with the clinician. ePCR has no dose calculator.