The European Practice Assessment is a pan-European development for
quality management
Total quality management, Total Quality management (TQM), ensures that an organization, product, or service consistently performs as intended, as opposed to Quality Management, which focuses on work process and procedure standards. It has four mai ...
in primary health care.
The scaffolding is a set of indicators, that EPA instrument enables
general practitioners
A general practitioner (GP) is a doctor who is a Consultant (medicine), consultant in general practice.
GPs have distinct expertise and experience in providing whole person medical care, whilst managing the complexity, uncertainty and risk ass ...
to compare and to improve the organisation and management of their practices. It is based on an extended review of the international
literature on assessment models for
primary care
Primary care is a model of health care that supports first-contact, accessible, continuous, comprehensive, and coordinated person-focused care. It aims to optimise population health and reduce disparities across the groups by ensuring equitable ...
, with special attention
to the Dutch model of practice visits.
Aims
EPA's key aspects of activity are the development and validation of a set of indicators and tools describing the organisational aspects of primary care practices. It was initiated in EQuiP,
and the first set of indicators was developed through an international study by the EQuiP countries (2001–2004). Since 2005 it will be evaluated every three years.
The intention of the EPA instrument as a
quality management system
A quality management system (QMS) is a collection of business processes focused on consistently meeting customer requirements and enhancing their satisfaction. It is aligned with an organization's purpose and strategic direction ( ISO 9001:2015). ...
is to allow management and organization of medical practices to be measured and evaluated at regional, national and international levels with an educational approach.
History
Based on the TOPAS research project, the continuous development of EPA instruments started 2001. In autumn 2003 EPA as an instrument came into operation in nine countries.
Within a framework of an international project,
the idea of an indicator-based instrument proved to give internationally valid, reliable and feasible
results for quality improvement in
primary health care
Primary health care (PHC) is a whole-of-society approach to effectively organise and strengthen national health systems to bring services for health and wellbeing closer to communities.
Primary health care enables health systems to support a pe ...
.
The following nine countries took part in the study and the further development: Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Slovenia, Austria and Israel.
Practice
encouraged several organisations to establish the European Practice Assessment model as an offer for high quality practice management on a national base. From six European countries leading institutes with experience in research in quality of primary health care and practice visits collaborate in the European Practice Assessment project:
*Belgium: Flemish Institute of General Practice WWVH, Antwerp
*France: ANAES, Paris
*Germany
AQUA-Instituteon Applied Quality Improvement and Research in Health Care, Göttingen
*Netherlands: Centre for Quality of Care Researc
WOK University of Nijmegen/University Maastricht
*Switzerland
swisspepInstitute for Quality and Research in Health Care, Gümlingen
*UK: Department of General Practice, University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff
*National Primary Care Research and Development Centr
NPCRDC Manchester
See also
*
EFQM
EFQM (the European Foundation for Quality Management) is a non-profit membership foundation established in 1989 in Brussels, when CEOs of 67 European companies subscribed to the policy document and declared their commitments to EFQMs missions a ...
European Foundation for Quality Management
*
ISO 9000
The ISO 9000 family is a set of international standards for Quality (business), quality management systems. It was developed in March 1987 by International Organization for Standardization. The goal of these standards is to help organizations en ...
The standards for Quality Management Systems from the International Organization for Standardization
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:European Practice Assessment
Primary care
Health care quality