On Monday 21st March Ken O’Brien, representing AMSANT and the NT ACCHS sector, attended a meeting at the offices of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (R.A.C.G.P) in Melbourne to discuss the draft 5th edition of their clinical accreditation assessment standards.
These are the standards to which the individual Health Clinics of each of our member services seek to achieve clinical accreditation and they have been established by the R.A.C.G.P in consultation with general practitioners, practice managers, practice nurses, consumers, technical experts, and many other stakeholders.
The Standards in force at present are the R.A.C.G.P 4th edition standards and these standards have five sections that accreditation surveyors use to assess general practices. The 5th edition of the standards is comprised of three modules that address the same areas as the 4th edition standards within a different structure. A modular structure allows for the updating of the modules separately. It also allows for the Standards to be adapted for other healthcare settings such as prisons and immigration detention centers. For example, the first two modules (Core Module and Quality Improvement Module) are relevant in all healthcare settings, but the third module needs to be specific to each healthcare setting. AMSANT has a copy of the draft 5th edition standards and the associated resource guide for reference if required.
At this meeting AMSANT was able to get complete agreement that the standards must contain sufficient flexibility to allow remote clinics to achieve accreditation where the intention of a particular standard is clearly being met or addressed even if the exact wording of the standard may not appear to enable such flexibility. Patient Feedback, for example, is one area that has continued to present such a difficulty. Allowing clinics the flexibility to show other ways and means of providing the evidence that they are obtaining patient feedback, addressing the issues raised within patient feedback and reviewing all aspects of their patient feedback methods provides the means of meeting this standard.
AMSANT also reminded attendees of the definition of Practitioner under the Standards. More often than not, assessors, some clinic staff and many others will state that the term “Practitioner” only refers to a G.P. Thankfully under the standards “Practitioner” includes not only a G.P but also includes a Health Worker and a Health Practitioner as well. This therefore also provides the flexibility to meet areas of the standards that refer to the need to have a “Practitioner” available.
AMSANT was also able to get agreement in principle that where an organization has achieved organizational accreditation then the individual clinics that form a part of this organization should get credit for sections that are then also assessed under clinical accreditation. This may include such sections as Governance, H.R, Feedback, Finance etc.
For more information, contact Ken O’Brien on ken.obrien@amsant.org.au