One of EFOSA’s goals is to promote the orthodontic care provided by orthodontic specialists in Europe and to enhance its quality. For this purpose EFOSA has developed a Self Assessment System (ESAS). The ESAS is an easy to follow quality assessment system which is available to all orthodontists.

Recognition of orthodontic excellence can be achieved in different ways. E.g. by peer review and a certification system, like The European Board of Orthodontics, or through Continuing Education (CE) which is mandatory in some countries for the orthodontist to keep her/his registration as a specialist. However, none of these provide insight in the orthodontist’s daily clinical practice and what factors lead to the best possible service to the patients. To accomplish this will be the main focus of the ESAS

The ESAS is based on the work of the EURO-QUAL project where orthodontic treatment is defined as a continuous process from first visit exam, through planning and active treatment, until the last out of retention control, and the principal of “Learning from best practice” is applied. In ESAS your treatment results are first measured with the help of a Treatment Outcome (TO) questionnaire and indices. Then your total orthodontic process and practice routines can be evaluated by a Treatment Process (TP) questionnaire. Since improvement of treatment results can only be achieved by improving the treatment process, ESAS then offers you the opportunity of “Learning from best practice” by comparing your TP-routines with the routines of the colleagues with the highest TO-scores. Then you hopefully will have a better basis to decide for improvements in your practice routines.

How does it work? The first part of the ESAS will determine levels of outcome and the second part focuses on the details of the process that leads to that outcome.

You first will have to enter data related to the treatment outcome in a standardised way. There will be several choices in determining treatment outcome, and indices such as The Peer Assessment Rating (PAR) and the Index of Complexity, Outcome and Need (ICON) have been incorporated in the ESAS. Since it is only by improving the different aspects of the process of orthodontic care that the outcome can be enhanced, you then will have to enter data describing your clinical process routines.

Orthodontists from all over Europe are invited to join the ESAS and gain the benefits of this self assessment system. ESAS is voluntary and has been developed to benefit from a controlled comparison with colleagues locally, nationally and internationally. Of course all data will be anonymous.

The ESAS is making quality assessment simple and attractive and helping orthodontists across Europe find ways of continuously improving orthodontic care for our patients.