Supporting quality and safety in general practice: Response rates to computer decision support

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Primary health networks (PHNs) are tasked with supporting quality improvement in general practice. Traditional methods to do this are labour intensive and lack impact measurement. We aimed to measure general practitioner (GP) response rates to computer decision support at the point of care. METHOD: Gold Coast PHN developed a decision support tool to deliver real-time medication safety alerts and prompts for interventions and record the GP intervention in 80 general practices covering 519,000 patients. RESULTS: From July 2020 to June 2021, there were 3153 alerts triggered for 2328 patients, with 1250 of the suggested interventions being done (40%). From January 2021 to June 2021, 19,019 prompts were triggered during a visit for 17,398 patients, with 5444 of the suggested interventions being done (22%). DISCUSSION: Our findings suggest that GPs respond to automated, real-time medication safety alerts and care prompts that are specific to individual patient need without the need for intensive PHN input.