265 research outputs found
Professional education and the role of general practitioners in public health and population health
During their subsequent careers many GPs gain
additional skills in areas such as epidemiology, health
program management, evaluation, biostatistics and
health economics.12 There are many Australian GPs
who have gained qualifications such as a Master
of Public Health, and there are many GP members
among the Fellows of the Australasian Faculty of Public
Health Medicine of the Royal Australasian College of
Physicians, all contributing to the public health and
population health focus of Australian general practice
Lessons from the TAPS study - Message handling and appointment systems
The Threats to Australian Patient Safety (TAPS) Study collected 648 anonymous reports about threats to patient safety from a representative random sample of Australian general practitioners. These contained any events the GPs felt should not have happened, and would not want to happen again, regardless of who was at fault or the outcome of the event. This series of articles presents clinical lessons resulting from the TAPS study.2 page(s
Australia’s systems of primary healthcare: The need for improved coordination and implications for Medicare Locals
Copyright © 2011 Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. Published version of the paper reproduced here with permission from the publisher.Background
In Australia, primary healthcare is
largely delivered through two parallel
systems: Medicare supported primary
care delivered by fee-for-service general
practitioners, and state funded and
managed community health services.
Methods
Semistructured interviews with 18 GPs
to investigate the current links between
GPs and local primary healthcare
providers.
Results
Barriers to links include: communication
and information, access and availability
of services, GP lack of awareness and
understanding of services provided in
the state funded sector, and lack of time
to gain information.
Discussion
General practitioners reported dealing
with more complex and challenging
patients. However, this did not
appear to increase their likelihood
of engaging with state funded
primary healthcare services in case
management. Medicare Locals are
a once-in-a-generation chance to
establish a genuinely coordinated and
multidisciplinary primary healthcare
sector. To be successful, Medicare
Locals will need to bring together two
parallel systems of care and improve
integration and coordination
Transitioning a home telehealth project into a sustainable, large-scale service: a qualitative study
© 2016 Wade et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background
This study was a component of the Flinders Telehealth in the Home project, which tested adding home telehealth to existing rehabilitation, palliative care and geriatric outreach services. Due to the known difficulty of transitioning telehealth projects services, a qualitative study was conducted to produce a preferred implementation approach for sustainable and large-scale operations, and a process model that offers practical advice for achieving this goal.
Methods
Initially, semi-structured interviews were conducted with senior clinicians, health service managers and policy makers, and a thematic analysis of the interview transcripts was undertaken to identify the range of options for ongoing operations, plus the factors affecting sustainability. Subsequently, the interviewees and other decision makers attended a deliberative forum in which participants were asked to select a preferred model for future implementation. Finally, all data from the study was synthesised by the researchers to produce a process model.
Results
19 interviews with senior clinicians, managers, and service development staff were conducted, finding strong support for home telehealth but a wide diversity of views on governance, models of clinical care, technical infrastructure operations, and data management. The deliberative forum worked through these options and recommended a collaborative consortium approach for large-scale implementation. The process model proposes that the key factor for large-scale implementation is leadership support, which is enabled by 1) showing solutions to the problems of service demand, budgetary pressure and the relationship between hospital and primary care, 2) demonstrating how home telehealth aligns with health service policies, and 3) achieving clinician acceptance through providing evidence of benefit and developing new models of clinical care. Two key actions to enable change were marketing telehealth to patients, clinicians and policy-makers, and building a community of practice.
Conclusions
The implementation of home telehealth services is still in an early stage. Change agents and a community of practice can contribute by marketing telehealth, demonstrating policy alignment and providing potential solutions for difficult health services problems. This should assist health leaders to move from trials to large-scale services
Lessons from the TAPS study - Errors relating to medical records
The Threats to Australian Patient Safety (TAPS) Study collected 648 anonymous reports about threats to patient safety from a representative random sample of Australian general practitioners. These contained any events the GPs felt should not have happened and would not want to happen again, regardless of who was at fault or the outcome of the event. This series of articles presents clinical lessons resulting from the TAPS study.2 page(s
Lessons from the TAPS study - Management of medical emergencies
The Threats to Australian Patient Safety (TAPS) study collected 648 anonymous reports about threats to patient safety by a representative random sample of Australian general practitioners. These contained any events the GPs felt should not have happened, and would not want to happen again, regardless of who was at fault or the outcome of the event. This series of articles presents clinical lessons resulting from the TAPS study.3 page(s
Lessons from the TAPS study - Managing investigation results - is your practice system safe?
The TAPS study found that errors in the process of providing health care were reported by general practitioners more than twice as often as deficiencies in a clinician's knowledge or skills. Approximately 20% of these process error events concerned investigations. In addition, some reported events that related to investigations included filing system and recall errors, which accounted for a further 10% of reported error events.2 page(s
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