RCGP Quality Initiatives for the practice team

 

The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) is committed to supporting GPs and the wider practice team to deliver high quality care to patients.

 

Quality is essentially about establishing a culture and ethos along with underpinning processes and frameworks that actively support continuous improvement throughout the whole of the practice.  It also means finding out what you may need to change to make sure you meet the needs of your patients and carers.

 

A practice that continuously improves follows a straightforward process by which it plans and communicates its improvement activities, implements the individual action points and reviews the outcomes. This ensures that they have achieved the desired effect as well as identifying further areas for improvement. Quality is about:

 

·      knowing what you want to do and how you want to do it

·      learning from what you do

·      using what you learn to develop your practice and its services

·      seeking to achieve continuous improvement

·      satisfying your stakeholders - those different people and groups with an interest in your practice

 

Quality Assurance

When the term 'quality assurance system' is used, it means a formal management system or framework you can use to strengthen your organisation. It is intended to raise standards of work and to make sure everything is done consistently. A quality assurance system or framework sets out expectations that a quality practice should meet. Typically, these are the stages that practices implementing our quality systems aim to follow:

 

·      Evaluate standards. These concern the performance that staff and users expect from the practice.

·      Carry out a self-assessment. This means that you compare how well you are doing against these expectations.

·      Draw up an action plan. This will include what needs to be done, who will do it, how it will be done, and when.

·      Implement. Do the work.

·      Review. At this stage, you check what changes have been made and whether they have made the difference

  you were hoping to achieve.

 

RCGP Quality Initiatives for the practice team

The College has developed two quality initiatives,   Practice Accreditation (PA) and Quality Practice Award (QPA). Both awards aim to help practices improve their Quality of Care towards patients. Differences and similarities between Practice Accreditation and Quality Practice Award are detailed here.

 

Joint CQC and RCGP statement

A key benefit of undertaking either PA or QPA is that they help prepare you for CQC registration in England.  Following a consultation the Department of Health agreed to postpone the registration of most primary medical services with the CQC, most of which are GP practices.  Registration must now occur by April 2013.  The CQC have also announced that this postponement will allow time for practices to engage in quality and accreditation schemes, which may be used by primary medical service providers as evidence of their compliance with the CQC essential standards.  The RCGP's Practice Accreditation and Quality Practice Award have been highlighted as schemes which may be used in this way.

 

For full details please read the full CQC and RCGP statement:

 

www.rcgp.org.uk/pdf/CQC_RCGP_joint_statement.pdf