General practice keen to improve prescribing practice General practice keen to improve prescribing practice

14 December 2009

Twenty three general practice networks from around Australia have been selected as demonstration sites for an innovative pilot project which aims to give general practitioners (GPs) feedback on their prescribing practices.

The Prescribing Data in General Practice Demonstration (PDGPD) Project – run by the National Prescribing Service (NPS) in conjunction with the Australian General Practice Network (AGPN) – is a quality improvement activity aimed at improving prescribing practice in patients with hypertension and chronic heart failure.

“Following a significant number of expressions of interest we selected 23 general practice networks to participate in the demonstration project,” said AGPN CEO Mr David Butt.

”This project offers GPs immediate feedback on their prescribing patterns and show how their prescribing compares to other GPs in their practice.”

“We are delighted with the number of practices that want to take part in the pilot, which shows the value of this type of project,” Mr Butt said.

The project uses the Canning data extraction tool so GPs can receive immediate feedback on their prescribing practices against clinical indicators.

“Until now use of electronic prescribing data extraction for the purposes of quality improvement and manual extraction for indicator calculations for prescribing indicators has been very time-consuming and complicated,” NPS CEO Dr Lynn Weekes said.

“To make this feasible, the Canning data extraction tool has been modified to automatically extract relevant prescribing data and calculate eight clinical prescribing indicators.”

The data extraction tool provides results for both individual GP and the whole practice. It also identifies, for the treating GP, individual patients who may benefit from a change in prescribing to optimise management.

 “As well as receiving instant feedback, GPs will be able to reflect on their prescribing practices through discussions with practice peers and a PDGPD Project Facilitator.”

The pilot project focuses on chronic heart failure and hypertension. Both these conditions have well-established treatment guidelines but studies show under-prescribing of first-line recommended treatments.

The pilot project will run for two years and involve approximately 180 practices over that time.

For further information visit

www.agpn.com.au/programs/quality-use-of-medicines-qum/prescribing-data-in-general-practice

The general practice networks which are currently participating in the pilot project are:

ENDS

The National Prescribing Service Limited (NPS) is an independent, not-for-profit organisation for quality use of medicines funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.