NSAP

National Standards Assessment Program 

The National Standards Assessment Program (NSAP) was a resource that enabled specialist palliative care services to engage in continuous quality improvement through self-assessment against the national palliative care standards, action plan development and implementation, as well as peer mentorship. The program was run by palliative Care Australia. The core objective of the NSAP is the improvement of quality in palliative care experiences and outcomes for patients, carers and families.

NSAP encouraged the use of audit tools on a regular basis to provide each service with information about its processes and, importantly, the outcomes for patients and families. The program was aware that there were numerous tools available for services to collect audit data, including the Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration (PCOC), NSAP audit tools and other clinical audits.

CareSearch worked with PCA from 2011 to 2016 to support services in collecting data to enable self-assessment against the standards. NSAP has been replaced by a new a new self assessment program introduced by Palliative Care Australia in 2019, Palliative Care Self-Assessment, or PaCSA.