QIS2012 - The Standard for Health Management Programmes and Interventions is the new Standard developed by QISMET which will be universally applicable and therefore offers providers of newer programmes the opportunity to apply for certification
QISMET is to get up to £335,000 to test and develop innovative approaches to improve health and wellbeing, Care Services Minister Paul Burstow announced.
The Quality Institute for Self-Management Education (QISMET) is producing a quality standard to cover all types of self-management support. This follows on from the work already carried out with Stepping Stones to Quality and diabetes self management education.
Development of this Universal Standard is being undertaken in response to the consultation QISMET has carried out with stakeholders that identified a need for it. It will also ensure an appropriate mechanism exists to safeguard high quality provision of self management and self care support services as the sector begins to develop more rapidly in response to government health policies, such as the QIPP long term conditions and self care initiatives.
Stakeholder consultation, carried out as part of QISMET’s inception in 2008, identified that although there were a growing number of different self management and self care programmes being developed there was no nationally agreed existing standard against which the newer programmes and self management intervention approaches could be audited.
It was also recognised that some providers were already providing more than one type of self management intervention. As the lack of a standard and external verification process potentially compromise the quality of self management support services available to people with long term conditions, the development of a ‘generic’ standard (as it was called at the time) was one of the main objectives in QISMET’s first three year Business Plan.
Since 2008 the need for the development of a standard which can be applied to all providers of self management and self care programmes has been gathering pace as the number of different types of self management intervention increases, the number of new providers entering the self management sector (often with no previous track record) grows, and structural changes in commissioning and provision of health care services take place. The plan to include commissioning of self management support services under ‘Any Qualified Provider’ from 2013 is particularly relevant, as the absence of a standard and certification process which can be equally applied to all self management providers makes it difficult for commissioners to know who offers high quality service delivery and for providers to demonstrate with any objectivity, that they offer a high quality service.
QISMET’s purpose and aim of developing the Universal Standard and certification is to assure the delivery of consistently high quality self-management and self care support services within local systems of care.
