Why is accreditation important?

• We involve and listen to the people on the frontline, including staff from all professional backgrounds, service users and their carers and partner organisations.  At a local level, this means engaging people in the review of their own service, and at a national level in how the network develops.

• We promote sharing of best practice as services are engaged with a network of peers, providing a forum for advice and information sharing.

• We support professional development as members can sign up to receive lead reviewer training and are able to improve their professional practice. We celebrate good practice and the achievements of staff as they are identified through the review process.

• The accreditation process helps to build dialogue with referrers, partner agencies and commissioners.

• Learning and innovations arising from the process are often shared beyond the participating service to other services within the organisation.

Why focus on psychiatric liaison services?

The PLAN team develops and updates quality standards approporiate for liaison services, in consultation with professionals, service users and carers. The standards follow a care pathway model, referring to links with primary care and other tiers and agencies.

The standards cover aspects of policy including the National Service Frameworks, the Department of Health’s Standards for Better Health, the Welsh Assembly Government’s Healthcare Standards for Wales and Scotland’s Delivering a Healthy Future. This means that services can use their tailored reports to demonstrate compliance with these national standards and to inform trust quality accounts as recommended by the National Quality Board.

The benefits of accreditation

Indicators of health, performance, quality and efficiency can give valuable insight into how care is being delivered and there is more emphasis than ever on the use of quality indicators within the NHS to improve services. 

 "We can only be sure to improve what we can actually measure"

                 Lord Darzi, High Quality Care for All, June 2008

The Psychiatric Liaison Accreditation Network (PLAN), can bring a range of benefits to a liaison service, including:

• Involving a wide range of stakeholders, including staff from all professional backgrounds, service users and their carers, and partner organisations.

• Improving quality, safety and efficiency within the service.

• Assuring commissioners and managers that the liaison service is of a high quality - in some cases accreditation has helped liaison teams to secure additional funding or new contracts.

• Engaging services with a network of peers, which enables sharing of good practice and provides a forum for advice and information sharing.

• Achievement of accreditation can support services to reduce their financial contribution to the NHSLA.

PLAN provides year-round support to help accreditation members maximise opportunities for learning and development.  This support includes the option of taking part in email discussion groups, learning events and annual conferences, as well as quality improvement advice targeted at individual services. 

The accreditation process

Accreditation follows an annual cycle of standards development, data collection during 'self review' and data validation during 'peer review' when members visit one another's service.  The PLAN team then collates all data and provides tailored reports highlighting the service's strengths and areas for improvement.  Throughout the accreditation process the PLAN team are on hand to support members wherever possible.

Teams are awarded their accreditation decision following discussions by the Accreditation Committee (AC), which comprises individuals from each of our partner organisations and service user and carer representatives.  The PLAN team will support members to make improvements including, where necessary, communicating with senior management and other stakeholders.