Clinical resources
Delivering e-health to Australia
The future of quality, safe, and efficient patient care will include a large dependency on electronic products, services and tools. This is why the RACGP is very excited to be at the forefront of e-health.
e-health is the electronic collection, management, use, storage and sharing of healthcare information. This information can include individual items such as referrals, test results, discharge summaries, vaccination history, medication history and diagnoses, to comprehensive medical records.
e-health systems that can securely and efficiently exchange data can significantly improve how clinical and administrative information is communicated between healthcare providers. As a result, e-health systems have the potential to unlock substantially greater quality, safety and efficiency benefits. e-health has the capacity to benefit all Australians – individual consumers, healthcare providers and organisations.
The benefits of a national e-health system are far reaching for patients, GPs and practice staff and other healthcare providers.
Patients
- Improved quality of patient care
- More patient focused integrated care
- Improved cost effectiveness of care
- Improved patient safety
- Improved access to healthcare
- Improved continuity of care
- Close the gap between rural and remote healthcare providers and patients
- Lives saved through better decision support, increased access to information, and reduced adverse events.
GPs and practice staff
- Improved access to reliable health information when and where it is needed
- Improved healthcare planning by ensuring resources are directed to where they are needed most
- Enhanced shared care for complex medical problems and chronic disease
- Encourage innovation to deliver improvements in health sector productivity
- Reduced burden on Australia's health sector through better health management (e.g. reduced duplicatoin of tests, visits and procedures).
General practice is in an ideal position to be at the forefront of e-health. There are over 125 million GP consultations taking place in Australia annually and computers are now used by 96% of GPs for clinical purposes. This demonstrates that GPs are increasingly reliant on computers for patient care and there are clear benefits that would arise from the Australian health sector operating as an inter-connected system, avoiding duplication and reducing errors. The manner in which data is collected, stored, and managed has to be agreed on by the general practice community given its understanding of the key drivers of privacy, confidentiality, safety, quality, ethics and accuracy. The secondary use of this data for health service planning and research must be governed with respect and due diligence.
The College is investing in e-health and will ensure that e-health initiatives are profession-led to better enable GPs and their practice teams to improve health outcomes for patients in the long term. e-health and information technology supports GPs' work and connects them with the extended primary healthcare team, public health, mental health and subspeciality services.
The future of modern healthcare services will be supported by GPs' ability to adapt to new technology. The RACGP believes that web based technology will be the future for GPs delivering efficient, high quality and safe healthcare to the community.
e-health will have significant impacts on the manner in which GPs practise in the coming decade. The fundamental aim of the RACGP's commitment to e-health is to see a healthcare system which is based on the principles of interconnectivity and interoperability, and one which is simple and intuitive.
RACGP Telehealth standards project
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) recognises that telehealth provides considerable opportunities to improve health outcomes for patients in outer metropolitan, regional, rural and remote communities and is committed to supporting the profession during the telehealth rollout.
More information about the Telehealth standards project
GP e-health summary
The RACGP is working closely with the National e-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) to further define the core elements of the GP health summary and its application in an electronic health record. This will provide clinicians with key health information when providing care. Health information obtained through an accurate and current health summary will ensure safe and high quality care is delivered through access to the e-health summary in an electronic health record. Software specifications need to be developed to ensure the design is technically robust. The RACGP has established a group of GPs to work with NEHTA to ensure that electronic health records are integral to the management of patient care and the treatment of patients across the health sector.
More information on the GP e-health summary
RACGP Computer Security guidelines
The RACGP has developed the RACGP computer security guidelines: a self assessment guide and checklist for general practice. General practice has specific requisites in computer and information security and this guide provides a range of templates to assist practices develop policy and procedure manuals as they ensure the security of business and clinical information. Maintaining information security is vital and requires planning and technical knowledge. The computer security guidelines provide a framework to enable practice staff to work through the elements of computer security and information management.
More information on the RACGP Computer Security guidelines
Clinical Health Improvement Portal – CHIP
The Clinical Health Improvement Portal (CHIP) is an exciting new national education, quality and business improvement initiative for general practice.
CHIP will improve the way that patient information can be used to better inform decisions in both clinical and business settings, and continues 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:
- The Clinical Audit Tool ®(CAT), a software application used within the general practice that allows analysis of identifiable practice information
- 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
- Analysis of practice information against general practice-agreed indicators to permit a practice to undertake clinical improvement, education and other activities relevant to that practice through benchmarking against other practices.
For more information please view the links below:
Delivering e-health to Australia - The Clinical Health Improvement Portal (CHIP) Flyer (623KB)
CHIP - Clinical Health Improvement Portal Pilot Invitation (632KB)
Clinical Audit Tool®
The RACGP supports the use of population health tools to assist in identifying areas for quality and business improvement in general practice. There are multiple tools available in general practice for this purpose. However, the RACGP recognises the PEN Computer Systems (PENCS) Clinical Audit Tool® (CAT) as a user friendly and convenient tool to assist practices in delivering high quality care. CAT is designed to enable practices to look at their practice population as a whole. This information can be used in a variety of ways, from simply getting to know the demographics of your population through to identifying areas for attention or targeting consumer information. The development of CAT has put GPs, practice managers and practice nurses back in the driver seat by giving them access to their own data in-house.
CAT can assist a practice to:
- improve the quality of care for patients
- identify gaps in patient data
- identify patients at risk
- support the creation of accurate disease registers
- maximise the business potential of the practice
More information on the Clinical Audit Tool
PrimaryCare Sidebar®
The PrimaryCare Sidebar® delivers a standard e-health resource onto the computer desktops of primary care providers. Providing a range of valuable clinical tools and resources at the fingertips of clinicians, the PrimaryCare Sidebar® eases existing work flows while facilitating the delivery of best care for patients.
PrimaryCare Sidebar® sits alongside the clinical desktop system and can pull through information from the open patient record. This means that decision support, assessments and other tools that support chronic disease prevention and management are always at hand.
More information on PrimaryCare SideBar
RACGP National Standing Committee e-health
The RACGP National Standing Committee - e-health (NSC-e-health) consists of GPs who have a special interest in, and expertise, in the e-health arena. The work of the NSC-e-health sits within five strategic portfolios:
- Support the development and dissemination of useful and useable patient and consultation electronic resources.
- Support the development and implementation of electronic resources for general practice business and population based health delivery.
- Identify and support opportunities to promote e-health initiatives and work practices for general practice team members.
- Identify and support e-health initiatives within the College.
- Provide and support mechanisms to advise and drive the direction of e-health in general practice.
National Standing Committee – e-health
NEHTA and DoHA
The College works closely with the Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) and the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) to ensure that all e-health initiatives are developed to be well integrated and useful for general practice teams.
The RACGP provides NEHTA with advice and direction from a general practice perspective as they develop the core information components and implementation strategies of a range of e-health packages. These include: e-discharge; e-referrals; e-medications; e-pathology; and e-prescribing.
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) withTelstra
The RACGP and Telstra have announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding to deliver a suite of national e-health solutions and services. A new web hosted service will be the College's and Telstra's first e-health initiative. It will provide RACGP members with the opportunity to access high quality and relevant healthcare applications that will provide better patient care.
For further information read the RACGP media release: www.racgp.org.au/ehealth/media
General Practice Data Governance Council
The General Practice Data Governance Council is chaired by Dr Mukesh Haikerwal and comprises of representatives from the RACGP, the Australian Medical Association (AMA), Australian General Practice Network (AGPN), Rural Doctors Association of Australia (RDAA), Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine (ACRRM), Australian Practice Nurses Association (APNA), Australian Association of Practice Managers (AAPM) and Consumers Health Forum (CHF).
There are many activities being undertaken in general practice in Australia that rely on data collected by general practitioners and general practices in the delivery of care to patients. The peak general practice bodies recognise the urgency to review and revise protocols and procedures relating to the use of clinical practice data, including requirements for confidentiality, privacy, security, authentication and medicolegal impacts.
The General Practice Data Governance Council's role is to:
- Establish protocols for collation, analysis and presentation of data aligned with legislation and standards for best practice
- Identify opportunities for the provision of data for purposes that
enhance the role of general practice in Australia such as:
- improve outcomes for patients and population groups
- improve the quality of health care delivery, and
- increase the efficiency of healthcare delivery and the viability of general practice
- Monitor compliance with agreed protocols on data management of general practice projects and programs, with effective and regular reporting
- Consider other matters as agreed.
The work builds on existing resources and takes account of possible changes to legislation as a result of the Law Reform Commission report on privacy of health information, state e-health activities and the recommendations of the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA). In addition, there is a need to have independent monitoring of the management of aggregation of general practice data provided by general practitioners to ensure effective compliance with established protocols and procedures.