GVGPs

The Clinical Audit Tool (CAT) is a software tool that can be used with a number of the major clinical software packages available that allows GPs and practice staff to view clinical and other data in ways that help to improve data quality and achieve clinical best practice.  It is produced by an Australian company, Pen Computer Systems, which is involved in the development of ehealth solutions to enhance the delivery of National and State government initiatives in primary health care.

What is the CAT?

The CAT is a search tool that can be used with some of the major clinical software programs in use in general practice.  It is an enhancement to the basic search facility within these software programs.  It is a tool that is used in the first instance to improve the quality of data in a clinical system: Do all patients have a date of birth recorded; have all patients had their allergy status recorded; do all patients have their BMI recorded, and so on.  It has the ability to display data in a graphical format and to drill down to patient level data.  For instance, you can filter your data by patients seen within a certain time period, say the last 3 months; or those patients who have had 3 or more visits in the last 12 months; or female patients who have not had a pap smear in the last 2 years; male patients who are overweight, obese or morbidly obese; those patients who have a particular condition but are not on a particular medication; which patients are on 8 or more medications; etc, etc.  It is a very powerful tool which is easy to use, and also has the ability to print  patient lists and export this data to a spreadsheet for further analysis or use in a mail merge program.

The CAT enables you to obtain practice specific data on such things as disease prevalence

Additionally, it will combine data from some practice management software to provide further analysis of income generating possibilities.  For example, which of my diabetic patients have not had a completed cycle of care (good clinical practice) and thus the clinic has not claimed the PIP Incentive payment (missed income)

For more information, download this brochure, or go to the Clinical Audit Tool website.

Resources

A number of resources are available including a user manual (which is updated regularly) and numerous "recipes" (which are step-by-step instructions designed to search for and display particular sets of data).

For more information, to arrange a demonstration, or to install at your clinic, phone 5831 5399 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it at the Division.