No national IT system for appraisal

The Department of Health had said there will be no national IT system for revalidation when it begins next year. Instead, employers and doctors will be able to choose IT systems locally.

The Department of Health’s Revalidation Support Team has published an evaluation of its Pathfinder Pilots for revalidation, which looked at the experiences of more than 3,000 doctors in the ten pilot areas.

The evaluation found that 96% of organisations expected revalidation to lead to improved quality of care.

That enthusiasm was not, however, matched at grassroots level, where only 43% of appraises and 36% of appraisers believed that quality of care would improve under the new system.

Doctors also reported concerns about how time-consuming the pilot toolkit had been to use; highlighting the time taken to scan paper-based supporting information and upload it into the toolkit.

The toolkit was also criticised for its repetitive structure, with every box requiring an entry even if it was not considered relevant. The evaluation also found there had been problems early on with the system crashing and failing to save data.

The Revalidation Pilot Toolkit was decommissioned on 30 June 2011 and there are now no plans to roll out a national IT system for revalidation.

The DH-funded RST said that health professionals and their employers would be able to choose the IT systems for revalidation that best met the needs of their local appraisal processes.

A spokesperson told EHI Primary Care that there would be no additional funding available for IT systems. She added: “We will be producing guidance to help people choose a system.”

The RST is due to publish its Medical Appraisal Guide next year, which will provide additional guidance for doctors on the supporting information they will need to provide for appraisal.

All doctors will be required to produce supporting information that they must use in their annual appraisals.

A responsible officer will have to recommend the doctor for revalidation once every five years based on the appraisals and the employing organisation’s clinical governance records.

The evaluation found that 50% of GPs involved in the pilot reported a 50% increase in the hours they spent on appraisals and rated the new scheme worse than previous systems in nine out of 12 indicators.

The evaluators recommended that simplified system should be introduced. They also said work should be done to found out why organisations had a much more positive view of revalidation than appraises and appraisers.

The evaluation was welcomed by health secretary Andrew Lansley, who said it was encouraging that 96% of organisations recognised that revalidation would improve the quality of care.

He added: “It is important to ensure that the extent of the benefits of revalidation are justified in relation to the costs. These findings will allow us to identify the areas on which we need to focus in the additional year of piloting.”