Structured yet simple approaches to primary care data quality improvements can indeed strike gold

General practice data provide important opportunities for both population health and within-practice initiatives to improve health. Despite its promise, a lack of accuracy affects the use of such data. The Sentinel Practices Data Sourcing (SPDS) project is a structured chronic disease surveillance and data quality improvement strategy in general practice. A mixed-methods approach was used to evaluate data quality improvement in 99 participating practices over 12 months. Quantitative data were obtained by measuring performance against 10 defined indicators, whereas 48 semi-structured interviews provided qualitative data. Aggregated scores demonstrated improvements in all indicators, ranging from minor to substantially significant improvements. Participants reported positively on levels of support provided, and acquisition of new knowledge and skills relating to data entry and cleansing. This evaluation provides evidence of the effectiveness of a structured approach to improve the quality of primary care data. Investing in this targeted intervention has the potential to create sustained improvements in data quality, which can drive clinical practice improvement.

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Enhancing general practice referrals for women of refugee background to maternity care

Australian Journal of Primary Health ◽

10.1071/py17105 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 24 (2) ◽

pp. 123 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Dannielle Vanpraag ◽

Wendy Dawson ◽

Bianca Bell ◽

Elisha Riggs ◽

Jo Szwarc ◽

...

Keyword(s):

General Practice ◽

Quality Improvement ◽

Maternity Care ◽

Maternity Hospital ◽

Communication Strategy ◽

Country Of Birth ◽

Improvement Strategy ◽

Quality Improvement Strategy ◽

Development Activity ◽

Improvement Project

This paper presents the findings from a quality improvement project implemented by a maternity hospital located in a region of high refugee settlement. The project was designed to improve the completeness of general practice referral information to enable triage to maternity care that would best meet the needs of women of refugee background. Referral information included four data items – country of birth, year of arrival in Australia, language spoken and interpreter required – used in combination to provide a proxy measure of refugee background. A communication strategy and professional development activity engaged general practitioners (GPs) in the rationale for collecting the four data items on a new referral form. Audits of referrals to the maternity hospital before, and at two time points following the quality improvement activity, indicated that very few referrals were completed on the new form. There were modest improvements in the recording of two items – country of birth and interpreter required. Overall, two-thirds of referrals did not contain information on interpreter requirements. Changing practice will require a more cohesive approach involving GPs in the co-design of the form and development of the quality improvement strategy.

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