600th Cornerstone Practice

A Nelson general practice is the 600th to be CORNERSTONE™ accredited and will receive its certificate and celebrate that milestone tomorrow

CORNERSTONE is a quality accreditation programme designed by the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners for general practices in New Zealand. Accreditation is by self assessment and then an external peer review process to accurately assess the practice’s level of performance in relation to a set of standards.

Health and Disability Auditing New Zealand (HDANZ) provides oversight of the CORNERSTONE™ programme and independent verification of reports and recommends practices to the College for final accreditation.

Royal New Zealand College of GPs Manager CORNERSTONE™ Waveney Grennell says to have reached 600 practices having gained accreditation is an exceptional milestone for CORNERSTONE given the voluntary nature of the programme.

"Participation in the programme enables general practices to validate their quality of care against the standard for New Zealand general practice, 'Aiming for Excellence'. It provides guidance, opportunities for improvement, and a way for each practice team to find out 'are we doing what we should be doing'?"

All 26 practices in the Nelson Bays PHO are either CORNERSTONE accredited or actively working towards accreditation.

Dr Joseph Hassan of St Luke’s Medical Centre in Nelson says the practice is very pleased to have achieved CORNERSTONE. “The fact that we do not have a practice manager meant the whole team had to be very much involved, this placed some strain on us but also had many benefits for the team as a whole".

“We were very grateful for the support of the local PHO and other GP practices who kindly helped us with policy writing. And we found the assessors to be flexible and constructive in the assessment.

“It is amazing to see that 600 practices have now completed the programme in New Zealand.”

The Nelson Bays Primary Health Organisation and RNZCGP will hold a celebration of the 600th practice milestone and the achievement of CORNERSTONE™ accreditation within the Nelson Bays region in general tomorrow (Thurs 7 July).

Ms Grennell says the College wants to celebrate the 600th accredited practice milestone and the success of all the other Nelson practices, as well as acknowledge the work done by Margaret Gibbs, the PHO regional facilitator who has supported the Nelson practices in achieving certification.

Three quarters of all general practices in New Zealand are now registered with the CORNERSTONE programme, which was established in 2004. The accreditation is valid for three years so a number of practices are now in their third cycle.

END

© Scoop Media