Australian Primary Care Collaboratives (APCC)

This Australian Primary Care Collaboratives program is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing. The aim is to support general practices in delivering systematic and sustainable improvements in the quality of care they provide to their patients.

General Practice NSW liaises closely with the Improvement Foundation Australia (IFA) to provide comprehensive assistance to 18 NSW Divisions supporting 64 practices in Phase 2 of the collaboratives. Monthly meetings are held in Adelaide to enable Regional Managers across Australia to share knowledge and experience and to plan upcoming events.

The journey of each group or ‘wave’ of practices participating in the program consists of an orientation session, followed by three learning workshops spread out over 9 months and monthly data submission. Data submission by practices includes de-identified patient data showing key indicators of care for patients with diabetes and CHD and a combination of measures reflecting the demand for the practice services.

Practices use PDSAs, a change management method that is designed to identify where a change actually leads to an improvement and a set of Change Principles and Change Ideas to improve measures in the topic areas.

General Practice NSW is heavily involved in providing program specific training to Division staff to address the new concepts and fundamental skills inherent in this program. This occurs on the day prior to commencement of each workshop with additional training days between workshops to address needs identified through a quarterly Skills Gap Analysis.

General Practice NSW is developing resources to assist Divisions train their practices in data collection, on-line reporting systems, effective clinical software use and systematic care items.

Further information

To find out more about the Australian Primary Care Collaboratives program contact:
Pat Simmonds - Regional Manager patsimmonds@gpnsw.con.au
Jacqueline Owens - e-Health Support Officer jacquelineowens@gpnsw.com.au