QUALITY PRACTICE AWARD

By The College
Contact the author by e-mail at christopher.johnstone@ntlworld.com

The College has updated its Quality Practice Award (QPA) to meet all of the indicators of the organisational and patient experiences sections of the new contract. It also retains the reflective and teamwork criteria, which are already contained in previous versions. As well as meeting the relevant indicators and obtaining the financial benefits from the contract, practices will also benefit from improved team working and the development of a better environment for patients and staff.

QPA is a quality assurance process undertaken by practices, which recognises a high standard of quality patient care delivered by every member of the Practice Team. It was launched in 1998 and 96 practices have so far achieved it. The team is assessed on a number of criteria including clinical care, health promotion and continuity of care.

QPA is a challenging award. It is anticipated that more developed practices will aspire to QPA, although it is something that all practices should with some degree of hard work be able to attain. The huge plus with the introduction of the contract is that QPA has been approved for use in monitoring the contract, with practices requiring only a ‘light touch’ thereafter.

The updated QPA will be the seventh edition of the quality initiative which has constantly been revised to meet changes in primary care over the years. There has already been considerable interest in the new version, details of which are available on the QPA page of the RCGP web site: www.rcgp-scotland.org.uk

hoolet is the magazine of RCGP Scotland. It is supported intellectually, financially and emotionally by RCGP Scotland.

This issue maintained by Robert Hallam.