Supporting quality and safety in general practice: Response rates to computer decision support

Abstract

Background and objectivePrimary health networks (PHNs) are tasked with supporting quality improvement in general practice. Traditional methods to do this are labour intensive and lack impact measurement. We aimed to measure general practitioner (GP) response rates to computer decision support at the point of care. MethodsGold Coast PHN developed a decision support tool to deliver real-time medication safety alerts and prompts for interventions and record the GP intervention in 80 general practices covering 519,000 patients. ResultsFrom July 2020 to June 2021, there were 3153 alerts triggered for 2328 patients, with 1250 of the suggested interventions being done (40%). From January 2021 to June 2021, 19,019 prompts were triggered during a visit for 17,398 patients, with 5444 of the suggested interventions being done (22%).

Symptomatic cancer diagnosis in general practice: a critical perspective of current guidelines and risk assessment tools

“…FHT is integrated into general practice electronic medical records to enhance management of a range of medical conditions, including cancer‐specific modules to identify patients potentially at risk of undiagnosed cancer by flagging abnormal test results. Other eCDS are being used in some primary health networks but are yet to be evaluated using randomised trials 29 …”