Salford data accreditation case study

Salford 2007

A pragmatic, hands-off approach to the IM&T DES has been the hallmark of Salford’s data accreditation preparations. The PCT believes its practices are capable of taking themselves through to accreditation, with support when needed (such as work on baseline reports).

Salford PCT’s 55 practices all have either EMIS or InPS clinical systems. Nilli Williamson, Primary Care Commissioning Manager and IM&T DES Project Manager, has been leading on data accreditation. Practices are also supported by PRIMIS+ facilitator Daniel Alexander, and there are also three clinical and three non-clinical assessors.

Every practice has received comprehensive training, regularly uses the PRIMIS+ CHART software and has found submitting data to CHART Online to be straightforward. However, further training in comparative analysis using CHART Online of practice results prior to assessment (for example when assessing areas of the e-audit that require benchmarking against national mean averages) was identified as a requirement from most practices. In order to address this, Daniel has been developing a detailed audio visual tool to assist practices with interpretation and complement any further training using CHART Online.

Nilli found Salford practices have needed the most help with Information Governance (IG) and she is experienced enough to provide this training to practices. The PCT has encouraged practices to make IG training mandatory for all staff in line with requirement 117 of the IG toolkit.

For Nilli, the DES is all about the ultimate goal of getting patient summary records right and changing the view of those few practices that are not yet positive. "It’s been an interesting challenge so far!” she commented. “One of the things that helped most with planning was the Primary Care Roadmap document, which covers all the NHS Connecting for Health programmes, and gives objectives and helpful advice such as who should take on responsibility within the PCT for each activity. It gives a much clearer picture."