The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has said that more than a quarter of all health and social care units have been found to be offering survives that are below the standards of quality and safety.

The watchdog said that it has taken steps to improve standards at 27 per cent of the units that were inspected. The CQC had conducted surprise inspection of 14,000 health and social care providers in England and has instructed 3,687 organisations to improve services in order to meet standards of quality and safety.

The authority had to completely shut down the service in some cases and have given improvement plans to others. The report said that only about a third of the private hospitals and homes that are inspected, offer acceptable level of care to the people compared to two thirds of NHS institutions.

The findings emerged after investigations that were launched following the Winterbourne View care scandal in 2011, in which BBC's Panorama showed care home staff appearing to taunt and abuse the vulnerable adults.

"Our inspectors are seeing a worrying number of examples where safe management of medicines is being compromised, often by a lack of information given either to those taking the medicines, or those caring for them," the authors of the report said.

CQC's deputy chief executive Jill Finney said that the now the inspection data is available with the watchdog and more indebt investigations can be launched. She also said that the report is only the first step in improving health care.