Quality Improvement
Our unique model provides tailored feedback to general practices to assist the existing clinical practice.
The vision of OPC Australia is to create audit data that is both relevant and applicable for general practices, in a hassle-free way for practitioners, and administrative and management staff. This will be achieved by collaborating with clinical, academic, and industry partners to translate research into clinical practice through new technologies and improved clinical services.
Asthma Clinical Audit Service
We can help general practitioners to review the management of their patients with moderate to severe asthma combining extracted coded data from de-identified patient electronic medical records and questionnaire data.
COPD Clinical Audit Service
We can help general practitioners to review the management of their patients with COPD by providing easy to use tools that can help to identify patients with the main risk factors associated with COPD and ensure optimal disease control.
Strategies That Promote Sustainability in Quality Improvement Activities for Chronic Disease Management in Healthcare Settings: A Practical Perspective
Healthcare providers recognise the value of quality improvement (QI) activities that enhance the care received by service users. QI is particularly effective for the management of long- term conditions requiring linked care. However, starting and sustaining QI programmes in practice can be time-consuming and difficult and may produce inconclusive and/or inconsistent results. As a not-for-profit social enterprise, Optimum Patient Care (OPC) has been delivering effective and sustainable QI since 2005 in healthcare systems in several countries.
The QI Cycle: Common Barriers to Sustainable QI and Solutions
We approach QI as a cycle of activities (Figure 2)which: first seeks to understand the context and needs of the healthcare setting (step 1), reflect on these needs in parallel with national or international standards for care (step 2), work with practitioners to set achievable and measurable targets (step 3), implement change (step 4), re-evaluate the care provided and embed QI in routine practice (step 5).
Data Collection, Audit and Research
OPC collects de-identified data from GP practices who are receiving the OPC quality improvement programme and research support service.
The de-identified data collected is used to provide GP practices with quality improvement reports and to help GP practices track the improvements they are making to patient care. The de-identified data is also used to help GP practices take part in clinical research.
The data is collected from the GP practice electronic health records using secure extraction software. The data we receive from GP practices is always de-identified, which means that any information that will identify a patient (e.g. name, date of birth, address, contact information) has been removed at the GP practice.