Annual Health Check (AHC)

The Healthcare Commission had previously assessed trusts in accordance with a system of star ratings. From 1 April 2005, the commission launched a new approach to assessing and reporting provider information, called the annual health check (AHC).

The AHC aimed to look at a much broader range of issues compared to the old star rating system. It also aimed to promote improvement in healthcare and support informed decision making.

The AHC assessment was based on a combination of a public declaration by the board about compliance with standards and a process of risk-based (and random) inspection.

The check comprised assessments against the following:

• core standards
• existing targets
• use of resources
• new national targets
• improvement reviews.

The annual health check required organisations to make self-declarations, which intended to put the onus on healthcare organisations to make sure that they were meeting the expected standards of performance.

Organisations were assessed on a scale of 'fully met', 'almost met', 'partly met' and 'not met' for assessments against core standards and existing targets. For other components, and for the overall rating, organisations were rated as 'excellent', 'good', 'fair' or 'weak'.

Furthermore:

• no organisation that was failing to meet national targets would be able to receive an excellent score
• receiving a 'not met' against core standards would lead to an overall rating of 'weak'
• for an organisation to receive an overall score of excellent, it had to show consistently good results across all of the assessments.