Data Quality – Setting the foundation to quality improvement success

In the Australian general practice context, high-quality data is fundamental to maintaining patient safety and delivering high-quality care. Quality data drives healthcare teams towards better decision-making, improved patient outcomes, and enables continuous quality improvement efforts. It serves as a reliable compass that guides us towards excellence in primary care delivery.

The RACGP suggests quality health records have six attributes:¹

Accurate – correctly reflects the patients’ details, information captured in consultation, and information collected from other sources.
Complete – contains sufficient information, keeping in mind the “expect to share” principle.
Consistent – uses a recognised medical vocabulary, standardised terms and abbreviations.
Easily read and understood – written in a way that is meaningful to other uses.
Accessible – data recorded in ways that make it readily retrievable.
Up to date – updated in a timely manner.

This endeavour is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Data quality improvements must be tailored to your unique local needs and circumstances.

Setting a goal

Enhance data quality and clinical coding within the clinical software system used in general practice.

Resources to support your QI

To achieve this goal, you can access a range of resources:

Review current best practice:
- RACGP Standards for General Practice 5^th Edition outlines a benchmark for quality care and risk management in Australian general practices.
- RACGP ‘s “Improving health record quality in general practice” is a comprehensive resource on high-quality health records.

Access a range of tools, guidance and support for enhancing data quality in your clinical information system:
- Medical Director Primary Care Data Improvement
- Best Practice Resources

Bringing the team together

Kickstart your quality improvement activity by bringing together a quality improvement team. Together, you’ll identify the key challenges and come up with innovative solutions, ensuring you all share a clear understanding of the improvement objectives and strategies.

Engage with your Primary Health Coordinator from CCQ; they can offer tailored support, resources and guidance to enhance your QI efforts wherever you are in your QI journey. Your Primary Health Coordinator can support your practice to:
- Bring a QI team together to decide on an improvement idea
- Plan, start and finish a QI activity
- Facilitate QI meetings
- Create practice-wide systems improvement

Gather data and information. Review current practice data and processes for improving practice data quality.
Identify and discuss any common barriers to optimal data quality practices. Consider using process maps, flow charts or driver diagrams to generate change ideas and improve processes.

Maximising your data

What data might you need? You’ll need data to understand the problem and measure your outcomes. We suggest you start with:

Primary Sense can provide insight, detailed reports and targeted guidance on improving data quality. The following reports are available within Primary Sense:
- Accreditation Report: Provides a snapshot of current % completion of alcohol, allergy, BMI, ethnicity, and smoking status. This report can assist you in identifying any current gaps in data collection.
- PIP QI Report – 10 Measures: Indicates the % completion rate for the 10 PIP QI measures across the practice population.

Clinical Software: Ensure you are optimising the use of your practice software. For example, ensure your team understand the importance of using coded diagnoses, recording information correctly in the software and actioning items appropriately.

Improvement ideas for inspiration

To achieve your goal, you can consider several improvement ideas, such as:

Identify and address patient records that are no longer active using this Primary Sense Data Cleansing Instructions (PDF) resource. This will streamline data and improve its accuracy.
Merge duplicate patient records in your practice system.
- Best Practice
- Medical Director
Complete an audit of demographic data and update patient records appropriately. Consider developing a form to opportunistically collect updated patient information when patients present to the practice. Utilise the Primary Sense report Patients Missing PIP QI/Accreditation Measures and add a reminder on patient files to update information when they come into the practice.
Ensure that all medical conditions are appropriately coded within the software, making it easier to retrieve and use the data effectively. Consider establishing a process to ensure rather than using free text.
- Best Practice
- Medical Director
Remove duplicate entries in recall and reminder lists to prevent redundant notifications and improve patient engagement.
- Best Practice
- Medical Director

Remember to self-report your QI project as a CPD activity. QI is a great tool for measuring tangible outcomes and demonstrating improvement in patient care!

Share your results with your CCQ practice support team and with your patients. Ensure you document your quality improvement activity to meet PIP QI guidelines and for CPD purposes.

References

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. Improving health record quality in general practice: How to create and maintain health records that are fit for purpose. East Melbourne, Vic: RACGP, 2018. Accessed 19 December 2024.

Ready to begin this QI activity?

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