Missed and late home care visits: the evidence CQC asks for
When inspectors suspect visits are short, late or missed, they ask for the call logs and run the analysis themselves, by hand. The provider who can produce timestamped visit records on request is answering the question before it is asked.
What happens when CQC asks for your call logs?
In July 2026 we read 50 recent CQC assessments of services whose ratings slipped, 25 care homes and 25 domiciliary providers. The most domiciliary-distinctive theme in the whole reading: late, missed or rushed visits, rosters with no travel time between calls, and no reliable visit data anyone could put on the table.
Notice what the inspectors did about it. They did not take anyone’s word either way; they requested the call logs and analysed weeks of visit records themselves. Where the provider could not or would not produce the data, that became a finding in its own right.
The domiciliary theme.
- Domiciliary assessments in our close reading cited late, missed or rushed visits
- 11 of 25
- Of calls at one provider completed in less than half the planned duration, in the inspection team's own 4-week analysis of visit records
- 31%
- Domiciliary providers among the 50 slipping services we read closely in July 2026
- 25
Domiciliary assessments in our close reading cited late, missed or rushed visits
Of calls at one provider completed in less than half the planned duration, in the inspection team's own 4-week analysis of visit records
Domiciliary providers among the 50 slipping services we read closely in July 2026
Counts from our close reading, not market-wide percentages. The 31% is one inspection team’s own analysis at a single provider: they pulled four weeks of visit records and did the arithmetic themselves, which is exactly the analysis a provider could be running weekly on its own data.
What inspectors actually write.
“Our analysis of visit records over a 4 week period found that 31% of calls were completed in less than half the planned duration.”
“We asked the provider to send us call log data and despite several requests they failed to share this.”
“Over 6 weeks I can see 10-15 different people who just turn up. It's the way things are done.”
The last voice is a person receiving care, telling inspectors about continuity. Ten to fifteen different faces in six weeks is the kind of pattern a provider’s own data would show instantly, if anyone ever looked at it that way.
Your data, reviewed weekly, provable on request.
Visit-time monitoring
Short calls, late calls, and rosters with no travel time between them, flagged in a weekly exceptions report built automatically from the data your system already captures. You see the pattern before an inspector builds it for you.
A continuity view per client
How many different faces each person saw this month, trending over time, so “10 to 15 different people” never arrives as news from a family member.
Family notification when a visit runs late
A message goes out when a call is running behind, so the office phone stops being the only channel and the reassurance arrives before the complaint does.
What a visit should contain, and what counts as acceptable, is your judgement and your registered manager’s: we are not care-sector consultants and we do not interpret CQC standards. We make the visit data you already capture reviewable, flagged and producible in one click. More on what we build for care providers →
More from this series: training, DBS and supervision: the staff-file gaps and rated Requires Improvement for Well-led: what now?
Common questions.
- Is this a rostering or electronic call monitoring system?
- No. Rostering and electronic call monitoring (ECM) are mature specialist markets, and if you already run one we build on what it captures: we make that data reviewable, exception-flagged and provable on request, which is the part the products themselves rarely do well. If you have no call monitoring at all, we help you choose one first and then build the review layer around it.
- What about lone working?
- The same visit data doubles as lone-worker evidence: who was where, when they arrived and left, and what was logged while they were there. Once the visit records are flowing into one reviewable place, the lone-working question and the missed-visit question are answered by the same trail.
Show us your visit data.
Bring a month of call logs from your rostering or electronic call monitoring system, however messy, and we’ll say straight what we’d build so the exceptions surface weekly and the records produce themselves on request. Costs nothing to chat, and you stay the care expert throughout.
or ring us on 07754 218 688 any weekday