Sharing Knowledge and Insights among ACHS Assessor Community

Highlights from our Lead Assessor Forum including a presentation by Margaret Banks

Every year, ACHS Lead Assessors meet to share learnings and experiences from ACHS assessments and ensure reliability and consistency throughout the process to support our Members. Important issues that arise throughout the year are identified, summarised and presented to the group for discussion and improvement.

A highlight of the event was a presentation from the Director at the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (the Commission), Margaret Banks. The assessors enjoyed asking questions and hearing the updates from Ms. Banks relating to the Commission, about emerging issues and program related information. 

Lead Assessors reflected upon the improvements resulting from the introduction of Short Notice Assessments by the Commission last year. We discussed the focus of assessments moving into the operational areas, which is also aligned with the Commission’s requirement of the increase assessment time that must occur in operational settings. Assessors reflected on their increased satisfaction in relating more closely with the wider team in the organisation as well as consumers, although it can be challenging to locate information needed to verify the requirements of the standards within operational areas. One of the challenges highlighted was the importance of ensuring that organisations always keep their Pre-Assessment Documentation current, as assessors rely on that information a great deal when making their preparations for the assessment visits.

In addition, the assessors received some key ACHS updates from the ACHS Group CEO, Dr. Karen Luxford, who was in attendance as well as other key heads of divisions. Simon Cooper, Manager of Performance and Outcome Services (POS) Team, gave an insightful presentation of the benefits of having critical information for Clinical Care Standards as well as managing Clinical Indicator Data through our new performance measurement tool: Metrik. The benefits of having an easy-to-use tool for data collection and a greater analytical function for tracking, benchmarking and measuring data was shared. 

Thank you to all involved in this insightful event, especially to Margaret Banks, for taking the time to join us.