GPSC leaders are strongly encouraging family physicians who participate in the PSP services such as coaching or the Panel Management to enrol with the Health Data Coalition (HDC).
“As more physicians enrol, the Health Data Coalition will be able to generate a more robust picture of population health that will help physicians to identify and develop ways to improve patient care,” said Dr. Kathleen Ross, President of Doctors of BC.
Across BC, family doctors are contributing to a provincial picture of what’s happening on the front lines of patient care by contributing to the physician-led Health Data Coalition’s data-sharing application, HDC Discover. Interested physicians can compare electronic medical record (EMR) data from their clinic to provincial averages in order to note trends and track changes over time, discuss tips with their colleagues, and enhance their learning.
In his New Westminster practice, Dr. Huy Nguyen found HDC Discover helpful in panel management. “HDC Discover allowed me to review my panel and gave me a truer sense of the number of patients I actually take care of. In doing so, I realized I might have the capacity to take in new patients. Additionally, it has allowed me to monitor chronic diseases in my patient panel. For example, with diabetes, I can see whether my patients' A1C's are up to date as a population, or with COPD I can see whether I've been good at encouraging pneumonia vaccination. This mentally reminds me to think about these when I see my patients in the office, or if we want to be more proactive, we can set up a process with our staff to recall or remind our patients about them and measure how we're doing over time.”
Outreach to Panel Management participants will begin this summer to ensure that they receive priority in the queue to enrol. The HDC recently completed an expansion of HDC Discover, now supporting participation from doctors who use OSCAR/WELL Health, TELUS Med Access, TELUS Wolf, MOIS, and Intrahealth Profile.
The General Practice Services Committee (GPSC), which funds and supports the HDC, saw a natural alignment with the Practice Support Program (PSP). PSP offers programs and services to help doctors build capacity in their clinical practices, enabling them to practice more efficiently, focus more on clinical care and patient relationships, and adopt attributes of the patient medical home in BC. The regional support teams at PSP have recently been trained on HDC Discover and, in partnership with their HDC colleagues, support physicians and teams with this novel application.
“Better data helps inform better care and better patient outcomes. We are excited to expand our application, HDC Discover, that puts data in the hands of family doctors and their teams,” said Dr. Shirley Sze, Chair of the HDC Board of Directors
There is no cost to enrol and begin using HDC Discover to support your practice improvement efforts.
Learn more here or speak with your PSP coach to get started.