RACGP Standards for general practices
Why become accredited?
Many practices choose to be assessed against the Standards by an independent third party to gain formal ‘accreditation’ against the RACGP Standards. Achieving independent accreditation against the Standards shows patients that your practice is serious about providing high quality, safe and effective care to standards of excellence determined by the general practice profession.
The only model of third party review supported by the RACGP for these Standards is peer review where one surveyor must be a general practitioner.
The RACGP envisages that formal accreditation against the RACGP Standards will be based on common sense and will not seek to penalise or exclude practices on the basis of technicalities.
Primary health services which do not meet the RACGP definition of general practice and are therefore unable to be formally accredited against the Standards, are nevertheless able to conduct a self assessment.
The RACGP encourages all services that provide primary health care to consider the Standards as a template for quality improvement and risk management. Most standards and related criteria will be relevant and will enable practices to build the fundamentals of quality and safety into their systems.
If a practice is undertaking a self-assessment against the Standards, it may be helpful to discuss the assessment informally with trusted colleagues. A ‘fresh set of eyes’ over practice systems can assist in identifying areas where the practice does really well and areas where the practice needs to improve. Most importantly, peers can provide feedback on quality improvement activities – they can help the practice verify if changes based on practice data have brought about intended outcomes.