Caveats and footnotes
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General caveats and footnotes
1 | The PIP Eligible Data Set is based upon the RACGP definition of a regular/active client who has visited a practice 3 or more times in the 2 years prior to the date of data extraction. Note, that a regular client does not necessarily mean that the client’s attendance at a practice has been recent. There may be a clustering of client visits to practices based around health service events. As some clients actively attend more than one practice, or the same practice more than once, including across more than one PHN region, these aggregated health service events may represent clients more than once. Each QIM is only indicative of a cross section of regular clients that meet the inclusion criteria for each measure. It does not represent the total resident population, the total number of individuals who actively attended practices, the prevalence of cohorts or conditions, or the percentage of total population that attend practices. |
2 | As outlined in the Practice Incentives Program Quality Improvement Incentive Quality Improvement Measures User Guide for General Practices (Department of Health 2020d), for calculating each Quality Improvement Measure, visits are only considered if they are eligible for an MBS rebate including clients visiting one or more providers in that practice. If more than one visit occurs on the same day, these are counted towards the 3 visits. Non-clinical events, such as administration and client notification activities are not counted as visits in this report. Clients who are deceased are excluded from the report. A known limitation of some clinical information systems (CISs) is the inability to distinguish clinical and non-clinical visits (such as notes made in the client record) for the purposes of this report. The capture of some data may be affected by the manual coding of diagnoses from free text data fields, and the sensitivity and specificity of the capture may vary with the accuracy of the manual input into a CISs. |
3 | Temporary telehealth MBS item numbers were made available from 13 March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These temporary MBS items were not included in the scope of MBS items used to calculate the SWPE for the purposes of payment calculations under the Practice Incentives Program (PIP) until January 2022. This includes payments for the PIP Quality Improvement Incentive (Department of Health 2022). This means that telehealth consultations received during this period were not counted towards the RACGP definition of a regular client (patient) who visited a particular primary health care provider 3 or more times in the last 2 years. Therefore, the actual aggregate QIM specific regular client cohort and proportions may be under-represented both nationally and in a PHN for that duration. PHNs that used the POLAR extraction tool resupplied data from January 2022 that included recalibration of telehealth MBS item numbers into the count of RACGP regular clients. As many GPs and their patients preferred telehealth consults over face-to-face visits during the COVID-19 pandemic, there would have been fewer opportunities to take physical measures such as blood pressure, weight and height thus impacting the overall regular client numbers for the related PIPQI measures. Readers of this report should take these factors into consideration when interpreting the findings. |
4 | Aggregate data for the 10 Improvement Measures are supplied on a quarterly basis from PHNs to the AIHW as outlined in the PIPQI Improvement Measures – Technical Specification (Department of Health 2020b). |
5 | In July 2024, the majority (92.9%) of the 5,988 PIPQI data submitting practices used an extraction tool to extract and submit PIPQI data from their CIS to their local PHNs. The remaining 7.1% opted for an alternative method of submitting data in the JSON format. These JSON files were generated either by the practices' own CIS or with the assistance of an extraction tool. |
6 | In July 2024, there were 5,988 practices that PIPQI that submitted PIPQI data. Of these, 14 data submissions across 7 PHNs that were generated by an extraction tool were excluded for reporting purposes due to technical issues (out of 5,565 practices submitting directly extracted data). There were also 411 out of 423 JSON files submitted that were excluded for reporting purposes due to ongoing data quality issues affecting multiple QIMs. Of the 411 JSON files with data quality issues, 276 were from practices using Best Practice, 86 using Medical Director, and 49 using other CIS types combined. |
7 | The capture of some data may be reflected differently across PHNs due to the operation of different extraction tools and CISs in use. In turn this has resulted in different interpretations of the QIMs and the associated coding. For QIM specific variations in coding by different CISs and extraction tools, please refer to the QIM specific caveats and footnotes. |
8 | Results arising from measurements conducted outside of the service that are known and recorded in the GP record are included. |
9 | The AIHW is continuously working with extraction tool and CIS providers to improve the quality of the PIPQI data. Therefore, at various points in time, there may be resupplies of the data and this may not be reflected in the historical reports. |
Quality Improvement Measure specific caveats and footnotes
QIM | Caveats and footnotes |
QIM 01 Diabetes: Proportion of regular clients with diabetes with a HbA1c result |
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QIM 02a Smoking: Proportion of regular clients whose smoking status has been recorded |
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QIM 02b Smoking: Proportion of regular clients with a smoking status result |
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QIM 03a BMI: Proportion of regular clients with a height and weight measurement record |
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QIM 03b BMI: Proportion of regular clients with a derived BMI result |
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QIM 04 Influenza 65 years: Proportion of regular clients aged 65 and over who were immunised against influenza |
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QIM 05 Influenza Diabetes: Proportion of regular clients with diabetes who were immunised against influenza |
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QIM 06 Influenza COPD: Proportion of regular clients with COPD who were immunised against influenza |
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QIM 07 Alcohol: Proportion of regular clients with an alcohol consumption status record |
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QIM 08 CVD: Proportion of regular clients with the necessary risk factors recorded to enable CVD risk assessment |
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QIM 09 Cervical: Proportion of regular female clients with an up-to- date cervical screening test record |
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QIM 10 Diabetes Blood Pressure: Proportion of regular clients with diabetes with blood pressure recorded |
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AIHW (2024i) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander specific primary health care: results from the OSR and nKPI collections, AIHW, Canberra, accessed 10 July 2024.
Department of Health (2020b) PIPQI Improvement Measures Technical Specification v1.2 22102020, Department of Health, Canberra, accessed 4 July 2024.
Department of Health (2020d) Practice Incentives Program Quality Improvement Measures User Guide for General Practices, Department of Health, Canberra, accessed 4 July 2024.
Department of Health (2022) COVID-19 Temporary MBS Telehealth Services: Factsheets on the use of the temporary MBS telehealth and phone consultation item numbers, Department of Health, Canberra, accessed 4 July 2024.
RACGP (2018) Guidelines for preventive activities in general practice, 9th edition, updated, RACGP, East Melbourne, Victoria, accessed 8 July 2024.