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OATSIH Web Based Reporting Tool
The Improvement Foundation (IF), working in consortium with OBS, has been contracted through the Australian Government Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health (OATSIH) to develop a new system to ease the burden of reporting, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services, through a web based reporting tool.
In addition to providing a secure mechanism for health services to submit data for reports to the government, the new system will enable better service provision by helping providers in their quality improvement processes.
Prior to launching the system in July 2011, IF is running a pilot to test it, as well as two competitions to decide both the naming, and the branding, of the reporting system. For more information, please visit http://www.improve.org.au/wbrt.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health services will be invited to take part in the pilot and to promote the competitions to their staff and community members.
Piloting
If you are a Healthy for Life service and currently using the Australian Primary Care Collaboratives web portal, we encourage you to get involved in the pilot, so that you can provide feedback about the new system which will assist you with government reporting requirements and improve the quality of services provided to your community.
The pilot will be conducted and completed during May with Menzies School of Health Research providing ongoing advice to assist with the planning and evaluation of the pilot.
If you would like to be involved in the pilot; would like more information about the web based reporting system or the naming and branding competitions, please contact Sarah Wrzeszczynski on (08) 8422 7466, email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or visit the Improvement Foundation website at www.improve.org.au.
International Forum on Quality & Safety in Healthcare
Principal Clinical Advisor for IF, Dr Dale Ford, and APCC Program Manager Bryan Foley attended the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare, at Amsterdam, from April 5 -8, to present two posters. One poster focused on the APCC Program and the other on the IF web portal. The posters are available to be downloaded from the APCC website. Click here to read more.
Diabetes, Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) and Access & Care Redesign National Wave Reaches their 18-month Milestone
In March 2011, 78 health services participating in the national Diabetes, CHD and Access and Care Redesign wave reached their 18-month milestone. Health services involved in this wave collectively improved health outcomes for more than 18,000 Australians living with diabetes and over 12,000 people living with CHD.
Improvements made by health services involved in this wave of the APCC Program mean that approximately 1,405 more people living with diabetes have their cholesterol within recommended limits, and approximately 1,398 more people living with CHD have their cholesterol within recommended limits. Congratulations and well done!
Submitting Data after the 18-month Milestone
IF encourages health services to continue using and submitting data to the web portal, even after reaching the 18 month milestone.
By continuing to remain active on the web portal your health service has access to a range of benefits, including:
- Access to a range of APCC resources that span all topic areas
- Ability to set your own targets for self-selected indicators
- Ability to continue tracking your improvements and benchmark yourself against peers
- Access to presentations and resources for good ideas to try at your health service
- Access to additional topic areas, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and the prevention of chronic disease, with more measurement areas to come.
If you would like to continue submitting your improvement measures each month a new Health Service/Practice Data Agreement is available which, in a similar way to the current health service agreement, requires the Division and IF to protect your data, and specifies how the data can be used. To find out more, please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Presenting APCC Program Results
Check out the APCC Program Results page on the website to view the latest graphs and results across national and state waves. Results are now being presented via topic, with the diabetes, CHD and Access and Care Redesign results aggregated across all four waves of Phase 2.
Maintaining Motivation
As many of the APCC waves are nearing completion (if they haven't already), it is sometimes hard to maintain motivation. The Eastern Ranges GP Association has put together an interesting blog article titled 'A bright idea for encouraging innovation in general practice'. Click here to read the article.
Dr Tony Lembke has also has some tips and advice for maintaining motivation. To read a short article about the 'Fish!' philosophy on improving morale and energy within your workplace, click here. You can also find and share ideas at http://apcc.org.au/sharing_ideas/1001-stories/.
 Local MPs Visit APCC Practices in Western Australia and Victoria
On Wednesday 9 March, Melissa Parke MP, Member for Fremantle, visited Dr John Troy's Rooms in Fremantle, along with CPM Claire Woolfit and two of the practice's patients. The practice has achieved great success with implementing a lung function clinic, and the patients were able to attest to the success of the clinic. National Program Director, Alison Coughlin, also attended the visit to discuss Dr John Troy and his team's success within the APCC  Program.
Above: Patient Alistair, Melissa Parke MP, Practice Manager Raylene Troy and Dr John Troy
On Tuesday 5 April, Coliban Medical Centre in Victoria hosted a visit with their local MP, Steve Gibbons, Member for Bendigo. Five patients from Coliban Medical Centre's Healthy Lifestyle Clinic attended the visit and shared their stories of weight loss and lifestyle modification success.
Above/Right: (from left) Belinda Carra, Alison Coughlin, Dr John Turner, Jackie Turner and Catherine Ferreira.
Reminder: Pen Computer Systems Clinical Audit Tool now Works with Practix
Practix software and Pen Computer Systems have been working together to ensure that Practix software is now compatible with the Clinical Audit Tool (CAT). The ability to work with CAT has been available for several months now, so if your service is using Practix and you would like to use CAT to query your patient database, contact your CPM or Julian Flint at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), or phone (08) 8422 7400 for more details.
'Collaborators' Talk’ Mailing List
Health services and individuals that are, or have been involved in the APCC Program are able to subscribe to the "Collaborators' Talk" mailing list. This allows the sharing of ideas across a wide range of issues. Recent areas of discussion include:
- Adding allied health notes to patients' clinical records
- Billing for INRs
- Billing for 24 hour blood pressure monitoring
- Increasing flu vaccinations amongst patients with COPD
If you would like to send a query to this list, email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and it will propagate out to the 1000 members currently on the mailing list. You're bound to get a response! The easiest way to subscribe to the list is to email the IF Data team (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)) asking to be subscribed to the Collaborators' Talk list.
 Happy Holidays!
The Improvement Foundation office will be closed during the Easter and ANZAC Day public holiday period (Friday 22 - Tuesday 26 April inclusive). If you need to contact IF urgently during this period, please phone (08) 8422 7400.
Have a pleasant break!
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