CASPE Research

CASPE Research

CASPE Research has had a major role in the development of standards and assuring the quality of healthcare services for more than ten years. CASPE have established and implemented a number of national programmes in the continuing search for quality improvement.

The Hospital Accreditation Programme (HAP) is a recognised independent provider of external accreditation. The HAP provides community hospitals and community services with a programme, which is designed to help, promote, develop and deliver the highest quality standards of health care. The programme assesses the quality of service delivery and ensures that appropriate systems are in place within the organisation to support clinical and corporate governance.

The programme is the longest established provider of external healthcare accreditation in the UK and is focused on the development needs of community hospitals and community services. Developed in 1990, the programme has a wealth of experience in standard setting, validation, assessment and evaluation and has been awarding accreditation for over ten years.

The programme is designed to support, develop and improve organisational and quality standards, through a peer-review process, resulting in improved delivery of care to patients. With the increasing role of statutory inspection, HAP is well placed to ensure quality standards are implemented and maintained. The developmental process not only provides independent review and evaluation, but encourages better working practice, team building and highlights innovations and best practice. The standards for accreditation provide a framework to work towards, containing up to date guidance from professional bodies and good practices identified through many surveys nation-wide and extensive research.

Developed specifically for healthcare, the programme is clinically focused and has the patient at the very heart of the process. Although the quality arena is full of 'new' ideas and buzz names come and go, the foundation and principle of HAP accreditation has remained the same; to ensure effective mechanisms and systems are in place to deliver good patient care.

The main reasons why so many healthcare organisations look towards HAP to help address the quality agenda are:

Feedback from participating organisations demonstrates that HAP has helped to address the clinical and corporate governance agendas, improved clinical effectiveness, enhanced communication between services and departments, encouraged team building and motivation and addressed the agendas of risk management and controls assurance.

The Accreditation and Development of Health Records Programme (ADR) is a national accreditation and organisational development programme for health records services in the NHS. The ADR Programme has been running since 1996, and has provided the framework for quality improvements achieved within the health records services of participating Trusts. To widen the scope of the programme further ADR is currently developing standards for the content of clinical records in consultation with the Royal Colleges and other professional organisations. It is intended that the format and content of these standards will ensure they are applicable within all clinical settings and health care sectors.

In response to recent evidence indicating the growing interest in the development of an accreditation programme with explicit quality standards for primary care records, ADR is also currently involved in developing this important area.

For further information on these projects, please contact Andrew Thomas at

CASPE Research
11-13 Cavendish Square
London W1G 0AN.

Tel: 020 7307 2879
Fax: 020 7307 2422
email: caspe@caspe.co.uk
website: www.caspe.co.uk

 

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