Primary Sense: Development of a World Class Medication Governance System for General Practice

Description

Background
General practice should be a hub of clinical excellence for high quality medication management in primary care. Safe, accurate and effective use of medication in general practice relies heavily on constant unwavering attention of doctors. There is limited and inadequate decision support from current prescribing software. Errors of omission, commission and monitoring are a common cause of patient harm.


Aims

To develop and test a comprehensive Medication Governance System for Australian General Practice.

Method

Data extracted from general practice clinics was automatically coded to combine laboratory monitoring, lifestyle details, demographics, medications and medical history.

Literature review, expert reference group and review of existing alerting systems allowed us to focus on deficiencies in current computer decision support.

Systems were designed to be able to provide both ‘intelligent’ alerts at the time of prescribing and population health reports for targeted action.

Results

Primary Sense was able to provide alerts related to genomics, physical measures, patient demographics, lifestyle, renal function trends, monitoring requirements, co-morbidities, co-prescribing requirements and deprescribing opportunities.

Alerts were individualised and presented at the time of prescribing. Alerts included access to relevant doctor and patient information. Reports enabled general practice clinics to recall patients when there was a change in clinical status that impacted medication safety.

Conclusion

A comprehensive computerised Medication Governance System is both feasible and necessary to establish excellence in medication management in Australian general practice.

Period	12 Oct 2018
Held at	GP18: The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners Conference
Event type	Conference
Location	Gold Coast, Australia, Queensland
Degree of Recognition	National