Rally for better patient data: AGPN

PRACTICES and divisions have been urged to push a newly elected federal government to invest in e-health so more accurate population health data can be collected.AGPN chair Dr Tony Hobbs said improving IT/information management support was fundamental to the collection of patient data, which itself was critical to measure the health of different populations throughout divisions.

Dr Hobbs said the Commonwealth’s $41.5 million underspend on e-health during the 2006-2007 financial year, reported in MO earlier this month, was “a disgrace”.

“It’s an absolute key enabler of moving general practice forward. If we’re not investing in that and not being able to spend it wisely, we are doing ourselves a disservice.”

He made the call following the release of AGPN’s annual 2005-06 report, which revealed that although divisions were performing well against key performance indicators (KPIs) and providing chronic disease, prevention and early intervention programs (see box), more specific outcomes were needed. For this to occur, more spending on e-health was required to enable practices to start “cleaning” their data, he said.

This meant ensuring all patients were active patients and that chronic disease patients were in the correct subgroup, such as listing glucose intolerant and non-insulin dependent patients under type II diabetes.

Last year, divisions were told by the federal health department to justify their existence by providing better outcomes data (MO, 8 December 2006).

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