Technology Infrastructure
The Web Portal
IF has developed a sophisticated online web portal infrastructure, which supports quality improvement programs to report, submit data, share ideas, measure and monitor quality improvement initiatives and stay involved in certain programs and projects that require reporting to the web portal. The web portal provides essential information for participants, including resources, calendars, results and reports, event information, registrations and a lot more!
More specifically, the web portal is used for:
- Electronic monthly data reporting for health services – When combined with a compatible data extraction tool, e.g the Pen Computer Systems Clinical Audit Tool (CAT), the web portal allows for fast, easy, electronic uploading of monthly clinical measures. If your clinical system is not compatible with a data extraction tool, data can be entered manually.
- Reviewing feedback graphs – The web portal converts raw data into easy to read feedback, or improvement, graphs. Practices and health services view their improvement graphs on the web portal.
- Viewing comparison graphs - Through the web portal practices and health services are able to compare their improvement graphs with those of their Division, their wave, and the national averages.
- Entering information for quality improvement, such as the Model for Improvement's Plan, Do, Study, Act cycles – This enables health services to keep an electronic record of their improvement work.
- Accessing resources – A number of highly informative workshop presentations, handbooks, templates and other resources are available within an electronic library. Items can be checked out to review, or downloaded to keep. The web portal comes with an excellent search facility.
The web portal is an extranet* which works like any internet site you may visit on the web, however it is a secure site that requires a username and password to gain entry.
*An extranet is an intranet that is partially accessible to authorised persons outside of a company or organisation. For example, when someone enters a bank website and logs-in to use internet banking, or visits their public library website and logs-in their membership number to order a book to borrow they are using an extranet.
Privacy
The web portal is a secure site. Members' details are not visible to other users and will remain confidential. Improvement Foundation (IF) will be able to see your personal details as they are used for administrative purposes but these details will never be released to external parties. Your practice or health service data and feedback graphs are confidential and only your team, the Divisional support team and IF can see these graphs. As for data, it will all be de-identified and aggregated prior to being extracted from your clinical software.
IF can adapt the web portal to suit a number of different needs and program to track your improvements. For more information about IF’s technology infrastructure please contact data@improve.org.au or phone (08) 8422 7400 or toll free: 1800 771 522.
Last Updated 27 October 2011
What is the Model for Improvement?
The Model for Improvement provides a framework for developing, testing and implementing changes. It helps to break down a change effort into small, manageable chunks which are then tested to ensure that things are improving and that no effort is wasted. It is always worth remembering that while every improvement is certainly a change, every change is not an improvement.
The Model for Improvement consists of two equal parts; the first part, the “thinking part”, consists of three fundamental questions to guide improvement work:
- What are we trying to accomplish?
- How will we know that a change is an improvement?
- What changes can we make that will result in an improvement?
For more information about the Model for Improvement visit: http://apcc.org.au/about_the_APCC/the_model_for_improvement/
What is the Collaborative Methodology?
Adapted from the Institute of Healthcare Improvement’s Breakthrough Series Collaborative methodology, in the Australian context, the Collaborative methodology is used as a framework for the APCC Program. This methodology has been applied to a wide range of management challenges. Originally applied to healthcare systems in the USA, it has since been adopted in other countries, including the UK, Scotland, Canada and New Zealand.
The Collaborative methodology is proven to be highly effective in achieving large scale systems change and demonstrating measurable outcomes. It provides a generic quality improvement model that can be applied to achieve incremental, rapid and locally relevant improvements across a broad range of clinical and practice business issues.