Revisioning Assessment
As the figures in the facing chart show, most physicians who are peer
assessed receive a satisfactory outcome. It is undoubtedly of some
relief to any practising physician to be told by the College that he or
she is practising at the expected standard. A confirmation of good
work is always welcome news. But over the last few years, we have
been asking ourselves how we can make the assessment more useful
to that vast majority of physicians who are already practising good
medicine. How can the physician emerge from the process with new
tools and insights to deliver even higher quality care?
“There are already well-established processes in place to address
the practice deficiencies of that smaller group of doctors who don’t
receive satisfactory outcomes in their assessments. We wanted to do
more for that large majority of doctors by providing a more educational, quality improvement-oriented experience,” said Wade Hillier,
director of Quality Management at the College.
So, we have been reassessing our assessments. Our Research and
Evaluation department has brought its expertise in measurement science and assessment excellence to a multi-year project to create a common assessment model and continuous quality improvement strategy
for all Ontario physicians.
“Assessments remain the best opportunity for us to have a direct,
positive impact on a physician’s daily practice. That is why we are so
committed to developing and continuously improving the quality
of our assessments with rigorous and valid tools and processes,” said
Mr. Hillier.
The re-visioning project currently focuses on improving peer assessment.
We are
redesigning the
peer assessment
program to be:
Discipline-specific;
Purpose-driven
to promote quality
improvement;
Consistent i.e., ensure
assessors are consistent
in decision-making;
Transparent i.e., any
physician can readily see
how the peer assessment program defines
and evaluates “quality”;
and
Relevant i.e., linked to
other quality initiatives.
How will we make assessment better?
• By following up with all assessed physicians to determine the peer
assessment impact, i.e., quality improvement;
• By making our assessors central to creating new assessment processes, tools and reporting formats. Currently, we have 350 assessors working on the redes Yێ¸