The Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care is searching for ways to make sure practices stick to accreditation standards between visits.
Accreditation cycles will either be extended or assessments will be conducted at shorter notice – the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care has invited GPs to pick their poison.
According to the commission, which administers the National General Practice Accreditation scheme, standards typically tend to relax at clinics in the three years between accreditation assessments.
Just one in five accredited practices were able to meet all mandatory indicators at their subsequent assessment.
Staff shortages, administrative burden and pressure to meet deadlines were all listed as contributing factors.
The Commission would prefer that practices were upholding standards in the inter-accreditation years, with accreditation standards viewed as “a reliable safety and quality assurance mechanism” rather than a tick-box activity.
To that end, it formulated two options: lengthening the accreditation cycle from three years to four years, but requiring at least one mid-point review to see whether standards are being upheld, or decreasing the routine assessment notice period from four months to one.
The rationale for lengthening the accreditation cycle was that it would balance ongoing feedback from general practices, which was split between recommending that accreditation happen more frequently to catch out the practices that only implement policies during the accreditation process and asking that the cycle be extended due to the work involved.
While likely to achieve improvements in overall safety and quality, and require no significant increase in administrative compliance, the Commission said that implementing a mid-point review was likely to increase accreditation costs.
For option two, the rationale was that short notice assessments would move the focus from preparing for an announced assessment to “embedding and maintaining safety and quality requirements and an assessment of daily operations”.
Related
This option was proposed directly by the Department of Health and Aged Care, and purportedly had support from key stakeholders in the general practice sector.
The Commission also judged it as being more likely to meet desired outcomes in terms of higher safety for patients and neutral cost to practices, while requiring roughly the same level of added administrative compliance as option one.
Consultation on the options will remain open to the public until April.
