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Delivering e-health to Australia

The RACGP recognises the importance of building a robust and forward looking e-health system for Australia. The College has always made decisions and taken actions that are creative and innovative, informed by evidence, and with the future of general practice in mind. This principle is particularly relevant as we aim to provide the profession with modern information management resources and tools to support the business of general practice.

What is CHIP?

The Clinical Health Improvement Portal (CHIP) is an integrated improvement tool that will make it much easier for GPs and practice teams to analyse their clinical data and other practice information. CHIP will improve the way that patient information can be used to better inform both clinical and business decisions, and support the range of initiatives developed by the College to enhance the quality of care provided by Australian general practitioners.

There are three components to CHIP:

1. The Clinical Audit Tool® (CAT) – a software application that allows analysis of identifiable practice information
2. A secure web based data warehouse that builds on the clinical and business improvement opportunities available via CAT and allows analysis of de-identified practice information against the division, state and national averages
3. Analysis of practice information against a set of indicators to permit a practice to undertake clinical improvement, education and other activities relevant to that practice.

How will CHIP benefit GPs and practice staff?

CHIP puts the profession back in control of their data. The future of healthcare will rest, in part, on good e-health systems.

High quality data about clinical encounters is a most valuable resource for GPs and practice staff and will:

• enhance the quality of health outcomes and greater safety for their patients through practice directed quality improvement
• support quality improvement through accreditation, information sharing and benchmarking
• improve the efficiency of service delivery and viability for practices and practice teams
• enhance opportunities for self directed education in line with practice needs
• permit general practices to be at the front line in population health activities, and
• underpin practice research and implementation.

What are the benefits of CHIP?

Practices will be able to:

• analyse their patient data and identify inconsistent practice
• identify business opportunities
• compare their performance against others and determine whether any changes are warranted.

In addition patients will receive more consistent care, based on services provided through the process of quality improvement.

How does CHIP work?

A registered CHIP user will be able to send their de-identified practice population data securely from CAT to the secure data warehouse. This data is sent as an XML file via a SSL secure connection to a secure server. The practice will then be able to log onto a secure website and view their practice population data and comparisons to state and national averages.

The practice information is reported against a range of clinical, demographic and data quality indicators.

In the first release there will be limited but valuable data reporting. In future releases, the College will focus on building flexibility and greater utility to report on clinical and business indicators that have high value and impact for general practices.

Practice-to-practice comparison is a high priority development for the program.

When will CHIP be launched?

Trialling of CHIP commenced in February 2011 and was completed in April 2011.

The e-health unit recruited 21 general practices and five divisions of general practice to participate in the CHIP pilot. Practices were able to view their data against agreed clinical indicators and benchmark against other practices and national clinical data. Final results have shown that 88 percent of participants were encouraged by the pilot to collect, view, and utilise clinical practice data more within their practice. In particular, participants felt they would use the data for:

• information at clinical meetings (71%)
• identifying patients at risk (71%)
• accreditation (71%)
• business decisions (e.g. diabetes cycle of care) (65%)
• data cleansing (65%)
• benchmarking clinical indicators (53%)

The College is very excited about the results and feels that we have clear evidence now on the acceptability of data aggregation and benchmarking. We will be formally publishing our findings. For more information about the CHIP pilot and other e-health initiatives, contact e-health Manager Judy Evans or e-health Senior Project Officer, Camilla Preeston.

For more information, please email ehealth@racgp.org.au.

Last Modified: 6 July 2011
Authorised By: e-health unit, Practice Innovation and Policy