Practice Incentives Program Quality Improvement Measures: data update 2021-22

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in people with diabetes, making regular assessment, prevention, and management of CVD risk factors such as blood pressure and lipid levels, a vital part of diabetes care. For people with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, managing blood pressure can help ensure appropriate medical care to lower the risk of macrovascular (stroke, heart attack and heart failure) and microvascular (kidney disease, eye disease and peripheral neuropathy) complications (RACGP 2020b).

Capture of results recorded outside of the general practice setting

Some patients with diabetes may receive care from other practitioners in addition to a GP, including an endocrinologist/a specialist physician, and/or other health care providers to safely manage their diabetes (RACGP 2020b). Results arising from clinical intervention conducted outside of the service that are known and recorded by the practice are included in the measure. However, sometimes blood pressure recorded elsewhere is not captured in this report. For example, this might be a result from a specialist service that is not recorded in the clinical information system of the client’s usual general practice due to an incompatible clinical information system between a practice and a specialist service.

Other sources of relevant data

Data on prevalence of long-term health conditions like diabetes are captured in the National Health Survey (NHS) conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). There are other administrative data collections where the data from these client-provider interactions are captured, for example, Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS), the National Diabetes Service Scheme (NDSS) register, the Australasian Paediatric Endocrine Groups (APEG), and state and territory registers.