Julian Flint, Adelaide Western GP Network
Late last year, a group of eight Divisions agreed to form a Divisions Reference Group in collaboration with Pen Computer Systems (PCS) to develop a Decision Support Tool for use in general practice. The outcome of this is a product which at the current time is called the PCS Clinical Audit (CA) tool.
The CA tool is designed to sit on the Practice computer system and provide information about a practice population's health status. The CA system takes a clinical subset of practice information and presents it back in an easy to use graphical user interface. This allows a team practice (GPs/Practice nurses/Practice Managers) to react immediately to:
- identify gaps in clinical information recording through use of searches not available in the native clinical software
- make useful work practice changes with respect to data management
- target risk groups of patients requiring further intervention
- identify opportunities for improved utilisation of the MBS items, as well as outputs for National Primary Care Collaboratives and National Quality and Performance System data.
Installing the tool is accomplished over the web, and updates to the program occur automatically. All the practice needs to do is press a ‘Collect' button to create the clinical ‘snapshot' required so that they can research the information with the PCS Clinical Audit system in-house.
The eight Divisions are currently in the process of testing the tool in conjunction with a selected group of their practices. Feedback from these practices is collated by the Divisions and a list of potential improvements to the next release is decided on by Pen and Divisional representatives. These new features are then tested and released to the practices for testing in the ‘real world'.
The screenshot below is an example of the information provided by the PCS CA tool.
The initial interface showing the list of snapshots collected (on left) and the filters section. This allows the practice to search for cohorts of patients that meet certain criteria. The practice can search for patients on the basis of demographics, last visit, conditions and medications. In the case of the latter two, the NOT condition can be also used – eg. Not having diabetes, not being on a certain medication.
For more information, please contact
Dr Peter Del Fante
CEO, Adelaide Western GP Network
E: delfante@health.on.net
Julian Flint
Health Informatics Coordinator
Adelaide Western GP Network
E: julian.flint@awgpn.org.au
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