Practice Accreditation

Accreditation of skin cancer practices differs from normal GP accreditation in that the doctor(s) working in that practice is (are) required to attain certification in this special interest area of medicine prior to the practice facility being assessed. Currently, the qualifications approved for this certification are:

  • SCSA ‘Certificate of Skin Cancer Medicine’
  • University of Queensland ‘Master of Medicine (Primary Care Skin Cancer Medicine)’ 
  • ACD ‘Certificate of Skin Cancer Medicine’, which is overseen by the RACGP and ACRRM

It is anticipated that other qualifications will be acknowledged in the future, subject to review by the SCCANZ Censor.

The RACGP has approved a trial of accreditation to assess the Standards for Primary Care Skin Cancer Practice, created jointly by the SCSA and RACGP, and it is hoped that the final results of this trial will be ready for review by the middle of 2009. Once approved by the RACGP and SCCANZ, full practice accreditation will be offered to those doctors who have attained the required certification.

There are two types of accreditation protocol: The first is for family GPs who also do a significant amount of skin cancer work in their practices, and the second is for stand-alone skin cancer clinic doctors. The former group will merely have to add the skin cancer specific criteria in the Standards to their normal RACGP accreditation assessment. The latter group, stand-alone skin cancer clinic doctors, will have to satisfy the specific skin cancer practice criteria as well as the RACGP GP accreditation criteria that relate to this type of special interest practice.

There is currently no financial incentive for skin cancer practices to be accredited. SCCANZ will be lobbying the Federal Government to implement either special item numbers or PIP/SIPs for accredited practices in the future. However, the demand by the general public, to know which practices are generally of higher standard, is so great that skin cancer practice accreditation will become a very worthwhile endeavour for primary care doctors who have a specific interest in this area.