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Australian Health Review Australian Health Review Society
Journal of the Australian Healthcare & Hospitals Association
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

The impact of self-assessment and surveyor assessment on site visit performance under the National General Practice Accreditation scheme

David T. McNaughton https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5842-877X A * , Paul Mara B and Michael P. Jones A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences, Macquarie University, Balaclava Road, North Ryde, Sydney, NSW 2112, Australia.

B Quality Practice Accreditation, South Gundagai, NSW, Australia.

* Correspondence to: David.mcnaughton@mq.edu.au

Australian Health Review 48(3) 222-227 https://doi.org/10.1071/AH23235
Submitted: 7 November 2023  Accepted: 31 January 2024  Published: 19 February 2024

© 2024 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of AHHA. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)

Abstract

Objective

There is a need to undertake more proactive and in-depth analyses of general practice accreditation processes. Two areas that have been highlighted as areas of potential inconsistency are the self-assessment and surveyor assessment of indicators.

Methods

The data encompass 757 accreditation visits made between December 2020 and July 2022. A mixed-effect multilevel logistic regression model determined the association between attempt of the self-assessment and indicator conformity from the surveyor assessment. Furthermore, we present a contrast of the rate of indicator conformity between surveyors as an approximation of the inter-assessor consistency from the site visit.

Results

Two hundred and seventy-seven (37%) practices did not attempt or accurately report conformity to any indicators at the self-assessment. Association between attempting the self-assessment and the rate of indicator non-conformity at the site visit failed to reach statistical significance (OR = 0.90 [95% CI = 1.14–0.72], P = 0.28). A small number of surveyors (N = 9/34) demonstrated statistically significant differences in the rate of indicator conformity compared to the mean of all surveyors.

Conclusions

Attempt of the self-assessment did not predict indicator conformity at the site visit overall. Appropriate levels of consistency of indicator assessment between surveyors at the site visit were identified.

Keywords: accreditation, audit and feedback, general practice, health policy, health services, primary health care, quality and safety, reliability.

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