The Health and Care External Quality Assessment Forum is an established network of organisations with the intention of sharing experience, good practice and new ideas around the methodology for such programmes, covering issues such as developing healthcare quality standards, implementation of standards within healthcare organisations, assessment by peer review and exploration of the peer review techniques to include the recruitment, training, monitoring and evaluation of peer reviewers and the mechanisms for awards of accredited status to organisations.
The original functions of the Forum were defined as:
Co-ordination: to map programme provision and need, to reduce duplication and to encourage the sharing of core developments
Communication: to provide a mechanism for accreditation bodies to communicate with each other and, collectively, with others such as government departments, professional colleges and national associations, and commissioning, funding and insurance agencies
Self-regulation: to seek voluntary convergence of standards and of the operation of the assessment process
Standards: to support the development, integration and assessment of organisational standards.
These functions have evolved over the years to include the wider landscape of external quality assessment, and the Terms of Reference have been updated to recognise this. Similarly, the name of the Forum has been updated to be Health and Care External Quality Assessment Forum (HACEQAF) to be inclusive of all types of assessment against standards.