Nov
18
Written by:
admin
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
I have become involved in the next wave of the Australian Primary-Care Collaboratives beginning in November 2008. I look forward to the opportunities to network with peers and brainstorm ideas on how to improve workflow and patient preventive care outcomes. I believe that there are significant improvements that may be able to be cycled back into the DCP.
The Australian primary-care collaboratives are primarily focused on diabetes primary care outcomes , patient access and IHD secondeary prevention.
PDSA'a (Plan Do Study Act) involve simple measures and improvements. Applied in incremental fashion through the use of multiple PDSA's, we will hopefully improve our diabetes register, recalls, diabetes education for patients, diabetes outcomes [measured as HBA 1C], and overall achieve first class management of diabetes.
For those of you who have not been involved in a PDSA/collaboratives study previously, and do not know what is involved, I'll try to outline briefly the role and requirements for a participant. Firstly it is very important that you realize involvement in any collaborative requires participation of not just yourself but also your practice manager and just about everyone else in the practice. You will be required to attend meetings with your practice manager on a regular basis where you will meet with coordinators and other practices participants. At these meetings you extensively discuss and explore issues regarding how your practice currently manages your diabetic patients, receiving background information from the coordinators about targets and goals. You will be offered ample opportunity to explore ways to improve your current practice implementation of diabetic patient care, becoming more proactive and systematic.
Steps involved could include
- initializing a diabetic register and recall system
- identifying problematic areas of diabetic management
- planning steps for improvement
- identifying goals
- establishing practice protocols for the care of people with diabetes
- implementing protocols in your medical software templates
- optimizing medication management
- improving Service Incentive Payments
- involving patients in delivering and developing their care through the use of strategies for self-management
- linking to services available within the local area and local general practice division
There are many other changes related to diabetes management which will likely appear during the course of the collaborative study and I will endeavor to keep a log of the most fundamental and practice changing ideas on this website.