At last, we have a tool that will help us identify ways to improve the outcomes of patients by searching through the details of thousands clinical records in an instant.
It is often difficult to manage a significant patient workload, and despite our best intentions or that of the patient sometimes things get missed. The question then is how to manage that risk, to find the patient who has not acted on a referral or those that could be considered for another treatment method.
Despite all our training and experience, things can get missed and the care we put into patients is often no better than the patients’ willingness to listen and act in their best interests. So, the question is how do we mitigate the risks? What tools are there that allow for a broad review of clinical risk? Importantly can we correlate this to income, medications, pathology or any other clinical metric?
The answer is of course yes.
At our practices we use Clinimetrix, an analytics platform, to analyse a full range of clinical data, including contact tracing for referrals as well as detailed financial data. The outcomes for the business and our patients have been nothing short of spectacular.
Working with GPs the system has been built to work with free text entries in the reasons for encounter and diagnosis fields and not just limited to coded records, giving the business a greater understanding of the clinical issues that are missed in the practice software otherwise.
From there you can make a myriad of linkages that provide answers to clinical questions that you never knew you needed or could get easily.
For me this became about asking questions of Clinimetrix that may never have been considered previously and then offering those outcomes to our practitioners to act on in the interests of patient health.
For instance, you might be concerned that males with an elevated PSA have not been followed up. The question is – how many males aged 40 and over with a PSA greater than 3 have not been referred to a urologist in the previous 2 years? The answer – about 18. Of the 18, 2 had PSA results that suggested possible neoplasm but had not been referred. Clinimetrix allows us to do this because it not only considers pathology results but also what communication has been sent or received.
Or you might wonder how many patients had untreated hypertension? The question – how many people who visited in the last year had a systolic BP greater than 150 but were not prescribed any antihypertensive medication? The answer – 41 with some not followed up nor was their BP measured at the next visit.
You may have noticed a few patients with gonorrhoea in the past few months. The question is – how many were prescribed drugs according to guidelines? The answer – all of them.
The time taken to access the answers in each case was a few minutes.
At our practices the use of this data has been clearly demonstrated by the recent Lumos* report where mortality rates for over 65yr olds are nearly 50% lower than the state average, plus rates for diabetes, COPD, ED attendances and mental health issues at all better than 50% lower than the state average. As reported by NSW Health/WentWest.
Of course, we don’t just limit use of analytics to clinical outcomes it is also used to explore demographics and the incidence of disease groups, develop training and resources and manage the scale of care accordingly. In essence Clinimetrix allows you to find those patients at risk AND show you where care delivery can be rewarding, easily, quickly and accurately.
Not only has Clinimetrix become our go to tool for our preventative health, but it’s also used explain the finances of the business, to collate information required for the PIP Quality Improvement Incentive, track patient attendances for 75+ and 45 health assessments, and much more. Plus, you can link revenues to clinical information and vice versa.
The mining of data has become a critical part of the success of our business over the past 7 years and as a practitioner and owner I have found it to be one of the most valuable assets we have.
Dr Ron Tomlins