The ACSA standards

What are the standards?

The ACSA standards are based on recommendations from the College’s Guidelines for the Provision of Anaesthetic Services (GPAS). The GPAS document is reviewed annually, to ensure that it remains up to date with national recommendations and any additions or amendments are reflected in an annual review of the standards. Feedback from ACSA reviewers and engaged departments is also taken into account to ensure that they are worded for maximum clarity.

• Domains 1-4 cover all aspects of general anaesthetic care provided in all hospitals in the UK and include standards that cover both adult and paediatric services.  The ACSA standards also contain a fifth domain which focuses on the provision of additional levels of specialised care delivered in specialist hospitals or general hospitals with a large and separate subspecialty unit.

• The anaesthesia subspecialties currently included within ACSA domain five are; cardiothoracic services, neuroanaesthesia and neurocritical care, ophthalmic services and vascular services.Specialist hospitals will have to include the relevant subspecialty but for general hospitals, subspecialties are optional so please liaise with the ACSA team if this is something you wish to include.

• All ACSA standards are mapped to the CQC Key Lines of Enquiry (KLoE) and the Health Inspectorate Wales (HIW) and Health Improvement Scotland (HIS) inspection domains.  The GPAS references are also listed against each standard, to allow for easy consultation if further detail is required.

Download a copy of the 2019 ACSA standards in several formats:

• The self-assessment is the version you will submit for your onsite review

• To improve usability there is a version with each standard along with it's supporting GPAS reference/s in full

• There is an Excel version which is useful for conducting your gap-analysis

• The summary of changes documents detail changes between the previous and current set of standards