In December 2004, Derbarl Yerrigan received funding for two years to undertake a Commonwealth health initiative to look at service delivery for clients with chronic disease and to develop a system-wide approach to chronic disease management. The CIP team work in partnership with our in-house service providers.
The first stage of the project has involved an analysis of clients to identify chronic disease within the population and to specifically identify clients with diabetes. The second stage will involve development of policies, protocols, and a manual to support chronic disease management.
A major benefit of the project is the flow-on effect across the clinical services in terms of raising awareness of continuous improvement processes, the identification and need for improved service delivery within the clinics, the clearer pictures and possibilities of improvements that are able to be integrated into clinical practice, and an increased motivation of clinical staff to be involved and to assist clinical changes.
The move towards improving and customising the Patient Information and Recall System, Communicare, has assisted and provided processes that will support the project and implementation of best practice management in chronic disease.
The process fits very well with the services move towards seeking clinical accreditation through AGPAL, and to develop clinical and administrative policy and procedure manuals for the clinical practice area.
DYHS has been registered for accreditation for some years, and recent improvements now place the service in the position of being able to be surveyed for accreditation during 2005/2006.
