The AIHW released last week the first report on the Practice Incentive Program Quality Improvement Measures.
With around 5700 general practices now submitting de-identified data across ten key measures as part of the Practice Incentive Program Quality Improvement Initiative (PIP QI) the report aims to provide nationally consistent and comparable data to support the assessment of needs and health outcomes.
The PIP Quality Improvement Incentive initiative supports practices in their efforts to improve patient care, particularly by focusing more on prevention, as well as help with broader population health planning. As part of the PIP QI, practices also receive details of their performance across each of the performance measures, helping them to identify areas where they can do more work to support quality improvement.
The data showing that practices are already working to improve their data collection in key areas like vaccination, diabetes, cardiovascular health, and cervical screening. The report establishes an important baseline against which further improvement can be assessed over time.
It is important to recognise that general practice remains under funding pressure and, while practices are highly committed to quality improvement, we need to see further investment in GP services including moving forward with previously announced plans to invest $448m that until now have been delayed by the COVID 19 pandemic.
