PRACTICE ACCREDITATION SYMPOSIUM

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

RCGP Scotland held its annual Practice Accreditation Symposium in Perth this year on 3 February. This event, which was well attended by PA assessors and advisors, launched the new contract compliant version of Practice Accreditation, known as PA1A.

Dr Mairi Scott, Chair of RCGP Scotland, gave the keynote speech which highlighted the involvement of the College in the development of quality, and demonstrated the importance of the assessor’s decision making role.

Dr Bill Taylor introduced PA1A which includes indicators from the Organisational, Additional Services and Patient Experience sections of the new GMS contract. It also includes indicators from the Contractual and Statutory section. Dr Taylor stressed that there is no change in the standard required to receive Practice Accreditation.

The new version, PA1A, will help practices choose which optional criteria they might undertake as they work towards preparing for the new contract. It was stressed that PA1A is not intended to be the mechanism by which external evaluation of the Quality and Outcome Framework is measured.

Over half the practices in Scotland have achieved some form of accreditation but there is still some way to go to encourage all practices to engage in the process. Many of the practices that have gone through the process have said they have benefited from an increased sense of practice identity, and improved morale and teamwork over and above meeting the requirements of clinical governance.

The criteria document will be available in March and there is more about this on the “Members’ Only” section of the RCGP Scotland website.

Visiting speakers, Ms Mary Freel and Dr Joe Wilson, discussed the process of Quality Assurance visits and Dr Ken McLean began to explore the interpretation of the new criteria.

Group discussions looked at the practicalities of introducing PA1A, and explored issues around the content and format of the assessors’ manual, training requirements, the assessment visit and how to encourage practices to participate.

In the afternoon, we welcomed Dr David Steel who outlined the role of NHS Quality Improvement Scotland. NHS QIS’ main priority concerning Practice Accreditation is to improve uptake by practices.

The future of Practice Accreditation will be discussed later in 2004 and we hope to keep everyone up to date with current changes through the RCGP Scotland website.

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

This issue maintained by Robert Hallam.