Your service meets all regulatory requirements, you’ve maintained a Good CQC rating for years, service users and families generally seem satisfied, and you’ve never had serious safeguarding issues or enforcement action, which by historical standards suggests you’re operating successfully with quality that should protect your business viability and competitive position.
That sense of security is becoming dangerously misleading as the definition of acceptable care quality is shifting rapidly beneath providers who believe that meeting standards and avoiding problems represents sufficient achievement, when commissioners, regulators, and increasingly the public expect levels of excellence and demonstrable outcomes that make “good enough” care increasingly inadequate for protecting market position or reputation.
By 2026, the gap between providers who deliver compliance-level care and those who demonstrate genuine excellence will determine competitive success more than any other factor, with commissioners prioritising providers who evidence outstanding outcomes whilst the reputational risks of being merely adequate increase as public scrutiny intensifies and expectations rise beyond what basic regulatory compliance delivers. Understanding how to position care services for excellence rather than adequacy has become essential for providers who want sustainable competitive advantage rather than constant vulnerability to being undercut or outperformed.
When “Good” Stopped Being Good Enough
CQC’s Good rating used to feel like success that demonstrated quality above the minimum required for legal operation, representing recognition that your service operated well with systems working effectively and outcomes positive for the people you supported, which felt like validation that differentiated you from services rated Requires Improvement or Inadequate.
The problem is that approximately 70% of registered care services hold Good ratings, which means being rated Good places you firmly in the middle of the pack without any particular distinction or competitive advantage when commissioners evaluate provider options, and increasingly commissioners view Good as baseline acceptability rather than evidence of quality excellence when they’re selecting providers for new contracts or framework positions.
A Gloucestershire residential care provider with a consistent Good rating since 2018 lost three contract renewals in 2024 to competitors with Outstanding ratings or recent Good ratings showing improvement trajectories, with commissioners explaining they were prioritising providers demonstrating exceptional quality when they had options to choose between multiple Good-rated services and needed differentiation beyond basic regulatory compliance.
The competitive disadvantage of being merely Good intensifies in tender evaluations where scoring criteria often award maximum quality points only to Outstanding-rated services whilst Good ratings receive mid-range scores that make winning on quality dimensions difficult, effectively penalising providers for being average even when average means meeting all regulatory requirements and delivering satisfactory outcomes according to inspection frameworks.
The Reputational Exposure Nobody Prepared For
Historical care quality discussions happened primarily between providers, regulators, and commissioners within professional contexts where nuance and sector understanding informed quality assessment, but that enclosed environment is ending as care quality becomes subject to public scrutiny through social media, review platforms, and local community discussions that don’t share professional sector understanding of what constitutes acceptable versus excellent care.
Online reviews on platforms like Google, Facebook, and care comparison websites increasingly influence family placement decisions and local authority commissioning managers’ perceptions, with negative reviews creating reputational damage that affects referral patterns and contract renewals regardless of your regulatory rating or formal quality assessments, and importantly these reviews often criticise aspects of care that technically meet standards but don’t meet family expectations around responsiveness, communication, or personalisation.
A Kent domiciliary care provider discovered that multiple one-star Google reviews from families complaining about communication gaps and inflexible scheduling were affecting their local authority referrals even though their CQC rating remained Good and they’d never had substantiated complaints through formal channels, with commissioners explaining that negative public reputation created risk they preferred avoiding by referring to providers with better online presence even if regulatory ratings were comparable. Real examples of how providers have addressed reputational challenges whilst improving quality positioning are documented in our client case studies showing reputation management approaches.
Social media amplifies reputational risks where single incidents get shared widely creating perceptions of systemic problems even when events are isolated, and providers responding defensively to public criticism often make situations worse by appearing uncaring or dismissive of legitimate concerns, with the skill of managing public reputation becoming as important as managing regulatory compliance but requiring completely different capabilities that many care managers lack.
What Excellence Actually Looks Like Now
The gap between adequate and excellent care is increasingly defined by outcomes measurement, personalisation depth, and innovation rather than just policy compliance and safe care delivery that historically characterised quality expectations.
Commissioners evaluating providers want evidence of measurable improvements in independence, wellbeing, health outcomes, and goal achievement rather than just confirmation that care plans exist and get followed, with scoring frameworks increasingly allocating significant points to providers who can demonstrate quantified impact through ASCOT scores, reablement success rates, hospital admission avoidance, or other metrics that show care actively improves lives rather than just maintaining people safely.
Personalisation expectations have moved beyond care plans that acknowledge individual preferences to services that demonstrably centre everything around individual goals, choices, and aspirations with evidence that people direct their own support rather than receiving predetermined care packages based on assessed needs categories, and inspectors distinguish between services claiming person-centred approaches and those where observation and service user testimony confirm genuine personalisation embedded in culture.
Innovation around technology, care delivery models, and partnership approaches signals to commissioners that providers think strategically about quality improvement rather than just maintaining current practice, with even small innovations like using assistive technology, implementing new communication approaches, or developing creative partnerships demonstrating the forward-thinking culture that commissioners associate with sustainability and quality excellence.
The Commissioning Shift Toward Quality Depth
Local authorities facing budget pressures might seem likely to prioritise cost over quality, but increasingly they’re moving in the opposite direction by consolidating contracts with fewer providers who demonstrate exceptional quality rather than spreading contracts across multiple adequate providers at lower rates, recognising that quality failures create costs through safeguarding investigations, placement breakdowns, and reputational damage that exceed any savings from choosing cheaper providers.
Framework compositions are shrinking from historically including 15-20 providers to newer frameworks with 6-8 providers who meet substantially higher quality thresholds, with some commissioners explicitly stating they prefer working intensively with fewer excellent providers than managing numerous adequate providers who require constant monitoring and generate regular concerns even without formal breaches.
This commissioning consolidation around quality creates winner-takes-all dynamics where excellent providers gain substantial market share whilst adequate providers struggle to maintain even reduced contract portfolios, with the financial implications being that investing in genuine quality excellence becomes the most viable business strategy even though it requires upfront investment that feels risky when budgets are tight. Providers questioning whether quality investment is justified often benefit from structured assessment of competitive positioning, with resources like our free bid readiness checklist helping identify where investment creates competitive advantage.
What Moving Beyond “Good Enough” Requires
Transitioning from adequate to excellent care requires cultural transformation rather than just implementing new procedures, with leadership genuinely committed to continuous improvement and willing to invest in workforce development, outcome measurement, and innovation even when immediate financial pressures create temptation to maintain current practice rather than push for excellence.
This transformation feels difficult because it requires investment during periods when resources are constrained, but providers who’ve made this shift consistently report that quality excellence creates competitive advantages that improve financial sustainability by attracting better contracts, reducing workforce turnover, and building reputations that make them preferred providers even in competitive markets. Provider experiences with quality transformation are shared in our client testimonials about moving from adequate to excellent positioning.
The Uncomfortable Reality
By 2026, being a Good-rated service delivering care that meets standards without serious problems will increasingly leave you vulnerable to competitors who demonstrate genuine excellence, with commissioning decisions, public reputation, and workforce attraction all favouring providers who’ve invested in moving beyond adequacy toward measurable outstanding practice that commissioners can justify selecting and families can confidently choose.
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