Bulletin - September, 2022
One Wedding and Two Fun-...Farewells!
Spring is in the air! And with it, the desire to move to Queensland (apparently)!
At the end of 2022, we'll be sadly saying 'goodbye' to both Danielle McMullen and Julie Nguyen, who'll both be moving north of the border.
Danielle has been a part of the CSMP family since 2015, completing her fellowship training with us and using Room 107, the driveway and occasionally the courtyard as background fodder for her many media apperances with the (initially) the NSW AMA, and national. Joking aside, She has made an enormous contribution with not only insight into the workings of how primary health is consulted by government bodies, but also by helping to shape practice policy and primary care on the ground here. Her ability to juggle so many varied and weighty (?) hats has absolutely been to our collective benefit, and her departure (while exciting) is still bittersweet. Nevertheless, we wish her and Juhan all the best as they start planning their lives together in Queensland (for keen-eyed observers, this month's bulletin photo is an ENGAGEMENT ring, and it comes with a great story, too)!
Similarly, Julie joined us to complete her training in 2018, and will be heading north at roughly the same time. Julie's skillset was a welcome addition when she began with us, helping to relieve considerable pressures on the back of a handful of registrar departures, and the seemingly never-ending demands placed on general practices overall. She'll be bring all four children (two fur, two human) as well as her husband for the ride, too.
Given the last two years of COVID and various associated interruptions, we've begun planning either a combined Christmas and farewell event, or potentially separete gatherings to make sure we send off our colleagues in style - more info to come!
Closing The Gap - How It Works...
As part of the longer term strategy to assist with indigenous health outcomes, the government initiated the Closing The Gap scheme. In practice, patients that qualify need to:
- Identify as either Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
- Been offered the Indigenous Health Assessment (MBS Item 715)
- Have a chronic disease or be at risk of developing a chronic disease.
- Be over 16 years of age
If these criteria are met, patients then need to be registered with their practice of choice each calendar year (meaning that if a patient registers in December, they'll need to re-register in January the following year). AS the 'incentive' element is practice based, if you wish to register a patient, please contact me through BP for this to be arranged.
Some suggestions:
- If you know a patient meets the ATSI criteria, create a reminder in their file for the registration to be done at their next visit (if appropriate).
- Clicking the 'registered for CTG PBS Co-payment relief' box in their demographics in Best Practice does NOT automatically register a patient; for this to be completed, a second form needs to be completed at registration:
In any case, contacting me in Best Practice is the easiest way to ensure that everything is registered correctly and that patients are able to access the services to which they are entitled!
"Paging Dr..."
Some of you may have received this SMS (or a version of it) on a 'day off':
This is part of our ad hoc paging system to allow us to contact GPs when specific 'emergencies' occur (i.e. issues with an authority script, doctor-specific emergencies, or a returned call from another external body and we are unable to transfer at the time of the contact).
We have begun using this as our main means of leaving a 'paper trail', as well as to ensure that GPs don't come back to work to find higher risk patients and messages left unattended. Using Best Practice to do this rather than an individual staff member's phone means that everyone can access information in a timely fashion.
Please note, that where possible, when an 'emergency' situation arises, admin staff will contact available on-site (or virtual) clinicians first, unless the patient has had no dealings with other GPs and an appointment is unavailable!
Shared Health Summaries...
Pre-Pandemic, one of the many fun things we engaged in was continuity of care through uploads to the My Health Record system:
Accessing the MHR is reasonably straightforward - from within the patient file, simply either click the button (seen above), or use the key combination CRTL + F9.
If the button appears with a RED border, click anyway - the border simply indicates whether or not the patient's MHR has been accessed at this site, not whether or not a record exists.
Likewise, to meet our obligations for the Digital Health PIP, we need to be uploading summaries on a regular basis (if you're not sure how, contact either myself or the nurses)! This tends to be a good idea when:
- A patient's medications have changed (either adding or removing)
- An allergy list has been updated
- A new chronic condition has been diagnosed
While access to the MHR has proven patchy within hospitals, patients having this access at an admission can be very useful if no other documenation is available!
Did You Check the MHR...?
While we now have regular and generally reliable access to the National Cancer Screening Registry (NCSR) through Best Practice, a number of pathology providers have begun adding results into patient MHRs - notably Laverty, who have notoriously problematic staff manning the phones should you need to chase a result (record i 40+ mins followed by hanging up).
If you're looking for in-hospital pathology or other results for a patient, please check the MHR first before contacting reception to chase - it may save EVERYONE time!
Finding Policy and Practice information...(Rpt).
All practice policy information can now be found in the General channel within Microsoft Teams, as well as the most up-to-date list of MBS items.
If you've not logged in to Teams (or forgotten your log on), please contact me!
Duress Alarms - Successful Test...!
Thanks everyone for your patience during the test for the buttons last month - everything seemed to work as expected, so now hopefully we won't need to use them!
That being said, if your button does NOT resemble the one pictured above, please let me know ASAP so I can configure it appropriately!
Practice health Check...
With the departure of both Julie and Danielle, we've been doing more data extraction than usual. While in this case, it's been to identify a GP's regular patients to facilitate appropriate handover, our data cleaning tools are significantly more powerful and can help to:
- Identify patients with specific conditions
- Identify patients on multiple medications
- Filter for specific risk factors
- Provide a breakdown of billing practices (i.e. ratios of bullk-billing to private billing amongst eligible concession patients).
With that in mind, CSMP will be happy to provide GPs with a 'health summary' of sorts, to help you either identify areas of general practice you see more/less of, as well as evaluate your own 'business' practices. These summaries can be provided monthly, and give you a better understanding of your own habits, and hopefully be of use to you. These are not intended to be a 'KPI' evaluation, but rather an 'FYI'!
Coming Events...
- QEII Public Holiday - Thursday, 22nd September - due to the passing of Queen Elizabeth, the federal government has announced a one-off public holiday to commemorate. CSMP will be closed on 22nd September for all on-site attendances. However, should you wish to work remotely, this will not be affected.
- Labour Day Public Holiday - Monday, 3rd October - CSMP will be closed on this date, but open on the Saturday, 1st October.
- uTECH Equipment Calibration -
TBC. Our annual equipment calibration will take place later this month - specific details are to be confirmed!
