In this section of the NSAP website you can access:
Specifically, the project aims to:
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enable specialist palliative care services to implement quality improvement activities and undertake a self-assessment process in accordance with in accordance with the Palliative Care Australia Standards for Providing Quality Palliative Care for all Australians (4th ed, 2004).
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meet Commonwealth priority areas as expressed in the National Palliative Care Program, specifically the following:
- education, training and support for the palliative care workforce
- research and quality improvement for palliative care services.
Throughout the project, PCA will align the NSAP processes with the developments in accreditation principles and programs proposed by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.
NSAP is a robust national quality assurance program that streamlines self-assessment and peer review activities that build on mutual recognition with existing accreditation mechanisms.
What is NSAP?
NSAP is a quality improvement program which will enable specialist palliative care services to undertake consistent self-assessment against the 4th Edition of the Standards as part of their quality improvement activities. Self-assessment can be followed by a peer review process, which enables a service to obtain an external validation of their self-assessment.
NSAP seeks to improve the quality, availability and access to palliative care for people with life-limiting illnesses with the overall aim of supporting palliative care services to move towards best practice, as set out in the Standards.
How NSAP works:
Services participating in NSAP work through the following steps:
Sign up
Sign-up flags the intention of a service to participate in NSAP. During the sign-up stage, services nominate an NSAP liaison offi cer. The NSAP liaison officer is invited to attend an NSAP workshop to gain a clear understanding of the NSAP process.
Specialist palliative care services that are unsure of whether they are ready to commit to NSAP are still encouraged to attend the workshop in order to learn more about the process, find out about the experiences of pilot services and what help is available from the NSAP team.
During sign-up, services receive additional information that will help them prepare for the commencement of the self-assessment stage. The signup pack contains detailed information about what the self-assessment
involves and what services need to do before they move to full registration and commence the self-assessment. Usually, the period between sign-up and full registration is between four and six weeks.
Registration
Registration indicates the service is ready to move to the self-assessment phase. Upon registration the service is provided with full access to the NSAP materials and resources including the NSAP reporting functions. Registering is a simple process of advising the NSAP team. Registration commences the formal period of self-assessment.
Self assessment
The period of self-assessment can take up to 12 weeks, but most services should be able to complete the process in 8 to 10 weeks. The 12 week time frame for selfassessment ensures the multi-disciplinary team’s commitment of time and effort is focused and most effective – and that there is an end in sight!
Reporting
The service submits to NSAP a summary of the self-assessment outcomes and prioritised improvement actions. NSAP then provides the service with a report that maps the individual service outcomes with those of all other participating services.
De-identified, aggregated information submitted by participating services will be used to identify opportunities where a state or national strategic approach to quality improvement can support local actions and lead to enhanced improvement outcomes.
A map of improvement activities and initiatives being undertaken nationally will help reduce duplication of effort.
Continuous improvement
Services should formally review themselves against the national standards using NSAP at least once every two years.
The NSAP process is based on the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle:
It is recommended that services formally assess themselves against the Standards every 2 years, although assessment can occur more frequently to assess progress against the action plan.
The NSAP project is governed the NSAP Steering Committee, NSAP National Reference Group and working groups as appropriate.
The NSAP Pilot was held from October 2008 until January 2009. 31 specialist services from throughout Australia registered to participate in the program and undertake a rigourous evaluation of the self-assessment process.
The pilot services came from and represented a diverse range of area's.
This included:
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metropolitan, regional and remote services,
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specialist service levels 1, 2 and 3
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consultative, inpatient, community and mixed services, and
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services from WA,SA, NT, QLD, NSW and VIC.
These 31 services generously offered their time, thoughts and advice to NSAP for four months and their input is greatly appreciated.
Further information about the outcomes of the NSAP Pilot program will be available soon.
It is important to remember that improvement takes investment.
Most accreditation programs are based on simple improvement methods such as the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles. The use of a common quality improvement approach will ensure that NSAP can be seamlessly aligned with organisational accreditation cycles – providing palliative care specific evidence aligned to broader health system quality domains.