Welcome to the NHS Revalidation Support Team (RST)

The GMC, in collaboration with the RST, DH and NHS Employers, published a medical revalidation supplement in the HSJ on 17 November.

The supplement includes an article on the components of effective appraisal, a number of case studies and a road map of the key dates and milestones leading to implementation, together with a helpful guide to what responsible officers should be doing at each stage.

Read the supplement

London, UK – 14 October 2011: Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS Medical Director is calling on the healthcare sector to get to grips with its obligations of quality and safety, in response to a review of clinical governance and appraisal in preparation for revalidation of doctors in England.

The NHS Revalidation Support Team (RST) has today published the ‘Review of
integrated clinical governance in the context of medical revalidation’, which outlines a snapshot of the state of organisational readiness for medical revalidation in England at 31 March 2011. The report is based on responses from organisations that employ or contract with doctors (designated bodies) as defined in the Responsible Officers Regulations 2010. Designated bodies completed a self-assessment tool called ORSA (Organisational Readiness Self-Assessment), designed to help organisations to determine readiness for revalidation. Five hundred and seven designated bodies completed returns, providing a 90% response rate.

The report outlines the progress made by March 2011 and the challenges that still
remain, which include:
· 97.8% of designated bodies had appointed a responsible officer, and most
(87.8%) are being supported in the role by the designated body.
· 73.7% of doctors had completed an appraisal between 1 April 2010 and 31
March 2011
· 51.7% of designated bodies had a medical appraisal policy that met the
requirements of the Responsible Officer Regulations 2010
· 87.8% of appraisers had received appraiser training
· 83.2% have a process for investigating concerns about a doctors’ practice
· 30.2% had a policy in place for re-skilling rehabilitation, remediation and
targeted support
· 67.7% of responsible officers were satisfied that their organisation is
providing sufficient financial resource to support revalidation

On receiving the findings of the review, Sir Bruce said: “Good clinical governance and appraisal are the bedrock of high quality care and CQC would expect to see that organisations have appropriate systems in place to support these in order to ensure people receive care that is safe and meets their needs. Indeed, appraisals have been a requirement on all NHS organisations since 2001. While good progress has been made in some areas, all boards in the health sector must grip the issues and make rapid progress. Patients need to know their doctors are up to date and this means doctors need to get the right development and assessment, which they are entitled to as part of their contracts.”

The Department of Health and Revalidation Support Team will be working with GMC, CQC, BMA, Medical Directors and others to ensure continued progress towards readiness for the effective introduction of medical revalidation.” Dr Anita Thomas, Medical Director at the RST, said: “We would like to thank all the organisations that took part in the ‘Review of integrated clinical governance in the context of medical revalidation’. We encountered a high level of commitment to revalidation throughout the English healthcare sector. The timing of this report allows designated bodies to both understand and improve the systems which will be required to support revalidation.

Part of our role at the RST is to ensure that organisations and boards recognise the benefits of revalidation as a major driver towards improving patient safety and quality of care, as well as financial efficiency in the current climate. There are challenges ahead, but we at the RST are confident that the implementation of effective revalidation will bring real benefit to patients, organisations and doctors.”