Quality Improvement Council

Prescribing Data in General Practice Demonstration Project

Main

Sandra Lonergan
Program Coordinator
PDGPD
Email: sandra.lonergan

What is the PDGPD Project?

The Prescribing Data in General Practice Demonstration (PDGPD) Project was designed to implement and test a new quality improvement activity for GPs. The project was developed by the National Prescribing Service (NPS) and Australian General Practice Network (AGPN) to enhance quality use of medicines and patient care in Australian general practice.

What does the Program Do?

The demonstration project focuses on two clinical areas — hypertension and chronic heart failure. The Canning data extraction tool supplies GPs with immediate feedback on their prescribing in these two patient groups, identifying individual patients who may be receiving suboptimal treatment for review.

Peer group discussions with the Network’s project facilitator explore practice data and clinical issues. GPs are able to compare their prescribing data to that of their peers in the practice, in the division and nationally. Regular discussion and analysis of data enables practices to track their progress and plan further improvements.

These continuous cycles of patient review, data analysis and implementing practice improvements are designed to improve patient outcomes and embed quality improvement in practices. Part of the demonstration project is a formal evaluation of the outcomes and feasibility of the activity.

How can participation in the PDGPD Project help you?

The PDGPD project is designed to help GPs review their current prescribing and management of patients with chronic heart failure and hypertension compared to best practice guidelines and their peers. The project aims to develop an acceptable and sustainable quality improvement activity which promotes good prescribing practices and improves short-term patient outcomes.

In the longer term, the project will contribute to:

  • Developing sustainable methods to promote quality improvement activities in general practice
  • Developing extraction and feedback tools that can calculate complex indicators which reflect quality of clinical care and can be used to promote change
  • Implementing quality improvement activities that lead to change in clinical practices and ultimately improve care and outcomes for patients with chronic heart failure and hypertension
  • Understanding collaborative methodology and the relationship of various components of quality improvement interventions to clinical outcomes.

What has it PDGPD Project achieved?

This research project is ongoing until April 2011.