A cloud-based technology will help identify patients who might be eligible to be part of the Health Care Homes trials
The cloud-based assessment system to help doctors identify patients who might be eligible to be part of the Australia’s Health Care Homes trials has the ability to lift efficiencies and reduce overheads for practices, the developer says.
The Health Department has commissioned Precedence Health Care to supply the “risk stratification tool” for Health Care Homes, using an algorithm devised in the UK to identify patients at risk of unplanned hospitalisation.
Some 200 practices are to take part in the trials, aimed at finding a new way of treating chronic and complex conditions and keeping those patients out of hospital, on a system of bundled payments rather than fee for service.
Monash University’s Professor Michael Georgeff, the founder and CEO of Precedence, says the system will be easy to use and require minimal training for GPs and practice staff.
“What is really innovative is that the government is starting to move to much more modern technology to build infrastructure,” he said.
“Because we use the cloud to manage all these processes – the assessment forms, certificates and so forth – it means we have a centralised way of controlling changes and for collecting information on how well they work.”
In addition, the central control will mean changes are automatically incorporated into the system without practices having to update their system software as changes are introduced.
Using Precedence’s cdmNet software platform, which was designed for coordinated care management, the tool will assess a whole practice population, identifying potential patients for the scheme.
In the second stage of enrolment, a patient will visit the practice to fill out with their GP a questionnaire known as the Hospital Admission Risk Profile (HARP).
On completion, an alert pops up if the patient is eligible for the HCH scheme, and the system generates a certificate. A risk rating determines the payment the practice receives for each patient.
The cloud-based model also raises the bar for security, Professor Georgeff said.
“Conventionally, we store patient information on our servers in a very secure way,” he said.
“In this case, we are designing it so that we don’t permanently store any personal information about the patient. We’re doing that to make sure there is no possible breach of privacy, even if someone comes up with the worst possible virus.”
The CSIRO is currently modifying the UK-developed risk calculator algorithm to suit Australian conditions and coding conventions. Precedence will then complete further work on encryption of patient information.
The two-year HCH trials will start at 20 practices in October, followed by another 180 practices in December.
Precedence is also the creator of Meditracker, a new smart phone app that carries a patient’s medical history, which has been touted as a breakthrough that could eclipse the My Health Record system being developed by government.
Precedence was bought in 2015 by Sonic Clinical Services. Sonic also owns IPN, the group that won close to 25 per cent of the HCH trials.
