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Primary Care Services Improvement Project (PCSIP)

Management of chronic diseases is now one of the major challenges facing health care systems. It has been noted that providing multi-disciplinary systematic care can improve the management and control of chronic conditions such as diabetes, depression and obesity. To this end, several initiatives in the primary care setting (eg. Practice Nurses, Diabetes Incentives) have been implemented in recent years.

The Primary Care Services Improvement Project (PCSIP) is a collaboration between the Adelaide Northern Division of General Practice (ANDGP) and the Disciplines of General Practice and Public Health at the University of Adelaide. It is funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), SA Health and the Central Northern Adelaide Health Service. The project aims to analyse the long-term costs and effects of primary-care based initiatives by investigating the benefit to patients with chronic conditions, relative to the cost of implementation experienced by Practices, patients and the health service.

Over the following months the project will recruit 16 Practices in the ANDGP. A minimum of 10 patients for each of three chronic conditions (diabetes type 2, depression and obesity) will be recruited from each Practice. Retrospective and prospective data describing health services utilisation and clinical measures will be collected from patient medical records, Medicare and PBS records and patient surveys. This data will be analysed to identify differences in patient pathways and intermediate outcomes eg. control of HbA1c levels in diabetes patients. Extrapolation of the observed pathways will enable estimation the long term benefits and costs associated with the implementation of primary care-based initiatives.

By identifying efficient ways to treat patients, the PCSIP will provide an improved understanding of the impact of primary care-based initiatives. This can, in turn, improve the quality of decision making around scarce resources and help avoid the implementation of comparatively inefficient interventions.

Further information is available at <www.adelaide.edu.au/pcsip/>

View the project summary in ROAR.