Quality assurance in general practice: the state of the art in Europe

Quality assurance' (QA) is an important new development in general practice. In order to describe the state of the art in this field a preliminary survey was performed by the WONCA European Working Party on Quality in General Practice (EQuiP) in 17 European countries. The results revealed considerable differences in the systems and organization of general practice care [such as practice form, list size, the role of the general practitioner (GP), remuneration], which will have an impact on setting up QA. The preliminary findings demonstrated that most countries are only just beginning the implementation of QA. Nevertheless, there are many valuable developments and experiments concerned with the methodology, procedures and structures for it. In order to accelerate the speed of adoption of QA and to avoid the repetition of mistakes, policy makers and GPs from different parts of Europe should study examples in their fellow countries. A clearing house of QA projects in general practice can help to inform them on valuable developments.