Monash Memo - 29 August 2001

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Health service gets tick of approval

Staff of Monash Caulfield Health Service, part of University Community Services at Caulfield, have every reason to feel proud of themselves after gaining full general practice accreditation this month.

As one of only a small number of university medical centres nationwide to have gained accreditation by the Australian General Practice Accreditation Limited (AGPAL), Caulfield now joins the Clayton Campus Health Service in having received the important stamp of approval.

The head of the Monash Caulfield Health Service, Dr Jill Grogan, said the accreditation had taken 18 months of work by all Health Service staff. She said she particularly wished to mention the assistance given by campus nurse Ms Judy Evans, as well as reception staff, led by Ms Coral Sheard.

“It’s quite an achievement – to gain peer accreditation from within the profession encourage practices to reach the highest levels of practice,” Dr Grogan said.

“This now allows us to have full access to Practice Incentive Payments, which is of great benefit to the Health Service.”

She said that while the Caulfield Health Service already had the standards in place, the official stamp of approval was vital.

The standards required in the AGPAL accreditation are set by the peak professional body for standards in general practice, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.

“Gaining the accreditation is not just a matter of saying ‘yes, we have sterilisation procedures in place’, but actually documenting that you do,” Dr Grogan said.

“We had to have all our practice procedure manuals, our recall systems, practice access policy (making sure patients can see a particular doctor when they need to), our confidentiality procedures and so on, in place.”