Registrar performance awareness

Training practices are boosting patient care and registrar development with the help of GP-designed software package Doctors Control Panel (DCP).

Belgrave Medical Clinic practice principal and GP supervisor Dr Dennis Gration likens DCP to “a personal assistant that thinks like a GP”.

“It’s a fantastic tool: it’s probably better than a stethoscope,” Dr Gration said of the package used in his Victorian clinic for six years.

Dr Gration, who is also an RACGP examiner and training supervisor for Eastern Victoria GP Training, said DCP was “the future of viable general practice operating at the standard we endeavour to teach our registrars.”

Queensland’s Victoria Point Surgery practice principal, GP Supervisor and GPSA immediate past chair Dr Bruce Willett said his practice had benefitted from DCP’s multi-faceted functions for about 10 years.

Dr Willett said the program’s dual ability to analyse data and flag immediate action during a patient consult; auditing tools; guidance for assessment tools, care plans and billing was very useful.

He said the program enhanced practice quality, optimised patient health, and taught good habits to GP registrars.

DCP links with the two major software programs used throughout Australia  – Best Practice, and Medical Director – and their associated appointment and billing software.

Developed by practising Melbourne GP Anton Knieriemen, DCP has multi-faceted uses specific to best practice and administrative requirements of general practice.

Among these is the program’s ability to help supervisors and registrars ensure recommendations of routine care are attended to before a patient leaves a consultation.

A glance at the program’s colour-coded control panel enables the doctor to access the patient’s preventative care status, and therefore promote interventions.

A green indicator shows recommended guidelines have been met; orange indicates what is due; and red indicates overdue.

“It drills into a patient history and pulls out all that summary information in a format that makes sense of the whole history,” Dr Gration said.

“It doesn’t intrude into the consultation process. It just helps facilitate it.”

Health on Central practice owner and GPSA board member Dr Nicole Higgins introduced DCP to her clinic in Mackay, Queensland, when it opened, and has used the full version of the program for the last 15 months.

First introduced to Dr Higgins by a fellow supervisor, she describes DCP as a “a safety net and a quality improvement tool,” and “a small investment that pays back many times over”.

“As a new practice embedding new staff, it was a check and balance to ensure demographics were correctly entered,” Dr Higgins said.

“As a practice owner I find the performance charts and business intelligence invaluable. Each individual contractor and registrar can track their clinical data and billing trends.

“The performance charts give me an insight into how the practice and individual doctors are going with information needed for accreditation, such as recording of allergies, smoking, alcohol etc.

“If there is any data missing it is quickly identified and remedied through the software. It gets me a quick overview of the practice’s billings, billings/hr, percentage of bulk-billed consultations, etc.”

Dr Higgins said patients, registrars and supervisors all benefitted from the DCP software program.

She said it provided patients a safety net; supervisors an excellent tool for chart review with patients; and prompts which ensured registrars met all the preventative activities of the RACGP red book.

For more information about Doctors Control Panel and subscription costs, visit www.doctorscontrolpanel.com.au