News and Updates
Preparing for the 6th edition: Practical support starts now!
The RACGP has published its Standards for general practices (6th edition) marking the beginning of an important transition for general practice accreditation. The Standards and other associated resources produced by the College is available from the RACGP's 6th...
General practice isn’t easy. Better systems can make it easier.
Owning or managing a general practice comes with significant responsibility. On any given day, you’re solving problems, managing finances, supporting your team, responding to patients, resolving conflicts and trying to keep the practice moving forward. Often, you’re...
Should General Practices Pay for Accreditation?
QPA Discussion Paper - Download here QPA Letter of support for pricing model - Download here Executive Summary General practice accreditation was one of a number of strategic policy initiatives from the 1990’s that were aimed to support quality of care and...
Defining General Practice – Really?
My background is in rural generalist practice in a small rural community and hospital. Obstetrics, anaesthetics, private general practice and over 38 years of getting out of bed 3 or 4 times a week and every weekend treating community acute care or highway...
General Practice Accreditation – Fix it or Scrap it?
You can call this a mea culpa, if you like. General Practice Accreditation is one of several initiatives developed since the early 1990s that aimed to enhance the quality of care provided to Australians by general practitioners, and to equip the general practice...
Yet another vaccine mishap and accreditation failure
Closely following on from previous embarrassing reports of a practice being publicly outed in major press outlets for challenges with vaccine storage and cold chain, comes another breakdown with vaccination procedures, in this case with the incorrect vaccine being...
Think rural and remote. Think different ~ Dr Paul Mara, QPA Founder & Managing Director
Its time to tell a personal story. I did rural medicine because of a horse called Sospel. At the end of 1971, my final year in high school, I was conned by some mates into going to Randwick Racecourse. I put $4 - a small fortune at that time - on a horse that came in...
25 years on – Has accreditation achieved its lofty ambitions?
This year marks the twenty-fifth year since the Practice Incentives Program (PIP), and subsequently the practice component of the Workforce Incentive Program (WIP) was linked to general practice accreditation. These programs annually contributed $830 million to...