The report, Monitoring the impact of COVID-19 on general practice – A suite of impact measures for Australian General Practice, is a deliverable of a research project titled 'COVID-19 – utilising near real-time electronic Australian general practice data to establish effective care and best-practice policy'. The project was undertaken as a collaboration between:

• the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre
• Macquarie University
• Outcome Health
• Gippsland, Eastern Melbourne and South Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Networks (PHNs)
• the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia Quality Assurance Programs
• Central and Eastern Sydney and South Western Sydney PHNs (as participants).

The project was funded by the Digital Health Co-operative Research Centre with project ethics approval provided by Macquarie University Human Research Ethics Committee.

During the project, de-identified general practice data from the Population Level Analysis and Reporting (POLAR) platform was analysed to produce a series of ‘Snapshot’ reports which provided PHN’s with important evidence for the impact of the pandemic on general practice activity during the first and second waves of the pandemic.

The new report defines a suite of ten impact measures for general practice:

• Impact Measure 1 – Medication prescribing volumes
• Impact Measure 2 – Telehealth consultation in general practice, its use and patient factors
• Impact Measure 3 – Pathology test request volumes
• Impact Measure 4 – Non-acute respiratory illness testing volumes and demographics
• Impact Measure 5 – Proportion of telehealth consultations in residential aged care facilities
• Impact Measure 6 – HbA1c monitoring in type 2 diabetes – HbA1c testing volume
• Impact Measure 7 – HbA1c monitoring in type 2 diabetes- HbA1c testing frequency and HbA1c levels
• Impact Measure 8 – Cancer screening in general practice
• Impact Measure 9 – Pathology referrals during telehealth consultations
• Impact Measure 10 – Mental health consultation volumes.

The proposed suite of impact measures can be used to determine the direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on general practice activity both retrospectively and into the future. The impact measures also have the potential to be utilised as part of electronic decision support aids (eg dashboard) to allow visualisation of the impact of waves of the pandemic on general practice and to support ongoing quality improvement activities by PHNs and Australian general practices.

Read the report.

For further information, contact Professor Andrew Georgiou.