Practice Accreditation Resources

Usually, all the forms for both individual and practice level feedback can be collected within mone month. Unplanned staff absence and holidays are the main reasons for delay.

Patient experience surveys like PAIS ask about the patient’s experience of interactions with the practice and the consultation, and about the organisation of the practice (e.g. how easy it is to get appointments).

Survey results can be presented either for the group practice as a whole, for an individual practice or for individual clinicians or staff groups. Practices seeking accreditation need to understand their practice-level results to inform continuous quality improvement. Clinicians who wish to use the results of patient surveys to inform plans for continual professional development need to know their personal results and feedback.

If you use CFEP Surveys’ PAIS, analysis and reports are part of the service. We provide you with a report of your practice results.

PAIS is a validated survey tool. All the questions have been rigorously tested and will be used in their original form, but it may be possible to create your own survey. Discuss your needs with CFEP Surveys so we can advise how we can support you to create your own survey.

Of course, you can design your own survey from scratch, but note that CFEP Surveys has years of experience and has done extensive work to validate each question of PAIS. If you have particular questions you would like to ask your patients, for example you might be able to add questions to PAIS, please contact CFEP Surveys to discuss how we can support you.

Yes. All results are confidential unless you choose to share them with your PHN. Every individual within your practice should receive their personal results in confidence.

Yes. It’s common for nurses and nurse practitioners to receive individual feedback.

Not unless you choose to share them, although it might be possible for a patient to claim access to them under Freedom of Information laws if your practice is part of a state or territory health service rather than a private entity.

Postal surveys may be better at harnessing the views of patients who attend the practice infrequently or are housebound, but in-practice surveys (where the form is handed to the patient after their consultation) make it easier to get a higher response rate and scores for mindividual doctors.

Interestingly, evidence shows this is not the case. Recent research from the USA shows that handing out surveys to those patients who you think will rate you favourably makes no difference to practice scores. Further, doing this gives you a biased view of your practice and operations and effectively defeats the purpose of implementing a survey in the first place – so it’s best not to try.

An annual interval seems appropriate for monitoring progress and allowing time for any changes made after the last survey to take place and make an impact.

Yes. CFEP Surveys has national and local benchmarks we can share with you.

Surveys can be a useful contribution to personal and practice feedback. CFEP Surveys’ PAIS will help you secure direct feedback from patients about your performance which may be used to assess your performance; identify opportunities for personal development, growth and improvement; and identify priorities for action planning, therefore contributing to your CPD requirements.