The Quality Improvement module asks a harder question than the others. Not 'do you have a policy' but 'what did you change, why, and what happened as a result'.
What a surveyor is looking for
- A specific activity, not a general intention to improve.
- The data or the incident that prompted it.
- What was actually changed in how the practice runs.
- Evidence that the change was reviewed afterwards, and whether it worked.
- Involvement of the team rather than one person's project.
How the tool handles it
QI activities are recorded against the indicators they support, with their evidence attached, so the trail from prompt to change to review stays together instead of living in a meeting minute nobody can find at survey time.
Because the record is kept as you go, the module stops being a retrospective writing exercise in the month before your survey.
The common failure
Practices routinely do good improvement work and then cannot evidence it. The activity happened, the outcome was real, and the only thing missing is a record made at the time. That is a documentation problem, and it is the one this module punishes.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a quality improvement activity?
A specific change to how the practice operates, prompted by data or an incident, reviewed afterwards to see whether it worked. A general intention to do better does not count.
How many QI activities do we need?
Refer to the current published RACGP Standards for the requirement. The tool's job is making sure the ones you do are evidenced properly.
Can we record activities retrospectively?
You can, but contemporaneous records are stronger and far less work. Recording as you go is the whole point.