Bushfire response – free training
Like so many others, I have been feeling devastated by the recent bush fires and the impact of this trauma on our country and people. So many of our colleagues, family, friends, practices and communities affected. Readers of my blog would know my own father (who had cancer) died in an bushfire evacuation centre and my niece got trapped in a south coast camping ground and thankfully survived a dreadful asthma attack. I just got another alert on my phone… Continue reading
The unsung hero of the palliative care story
“Preventable hospital admissions”, providing “healthcare in the home”, “integrated, co-ordinated care” delaying entry to aged care facilities, “ageing in place” – these are the conversations we are having in Australian healthcare right now. We talk of care for terminally ill patients and the aim for a “dignified death” at home, with good “quality of life”, a “healthy death”, a “good death”. The reality is certainly a lot harder than I could have ever imagined.
In our previous… Continue reading
My father died and I have a lot of people to thank
Recently I shared some of my learnings from my palliative care journey with my father. You can read that post here but essentially I was talking about how technology (specifically facetime & My Health Record) was enhancing patient-centred care.
Palliative care deals with constantly changing needs. Palliative care demands a fast, co-ordinated approach across many health professionals and service deliverers. As we also know palliative care does not stop when there are catastrophic events like bushfires happening. Patients don’t suddenly… Continue reading
Putting heart into systematic, preventive health care.
Tamworth, September 2019:
I was picked up at Tamworth airport and driven to my hotel by a professional driver, a lovely guy, aged probably in his early 30’s. We chatted and he asked me why I was visiting his town. When I told him Hunter New England has the highest incidence of preventable deaths from heart disease in NSW and myself and many health professionals were all there to work together to try to change that – to ‘Save 2000… Continue reading
PIP QI Free Resources from Katrina Otto
The new Practice Incentives Program: Quality Improvement – PIPQI starts today – 1 August 2019! Read official details from the Department of Health here.
Train IT Medical Principal Katrina Otto has now delivered 11 workshops on PIP QI for 385 GPs, nurses, practice managers, PHN and practice support staff across Australia so we’ve heard plenty of questions and have plenty of answers for you. We’ve continually improved our presentations based on some surprising findings when delivering the workshops (more… Continue reading
What is PIPQI starting 1 August and what does it mean for clinics? Q & A with Katrina Otto
Reblogged from HotDoc 15 July 2019
PIPQI stands for the ‘Practice Incentive Program – Quality Improvement’. It’s an incentive payment given to general practices once a quarter for demonstrating that they are providing continuous quality care. The incentive commences August 1, 2019, with the first quarterly payment being issued November 1.
There has been a lot of talk about what exactly the new PIPQI is and what this means for practices. To clear up some of the confusion, we… Continue reading
Why practice management needs a systematic approach.
Reblogged from MedicalDirector NewsHub 24 May 2019
Ever wondered how some medical practices handle staff handovers, business growth and big changes in management with relative ease? According to digital health, practice management and medical software expert, Katrina Otto, it all comes down to having the right systems and processes.
“Without systems, there’s chaos,” Katrina says. “That’s why a systematic approach is essential to good practice management and preventative health care. This is further evident in the RACGP standards,… Continue reading
Is your practice care-plan ready?
Reblogged from MedicalDirector.com 15 May 2019
There’s been a lot of industry talk lately about how pending MBS changes will require patients to register with a practice in order to build chronic disease care plans for them. We spoke with digital health, practice management and medical software expert, Katrina Otto, to uncover some smart, patient-centric ways medical practices can boost patient registration in order to enable better continuity of care.
Continuity of care and care plans
According to MedicalDirector’s latest … Continue reading
MyHR: now for something completely different
Reblogged from Pulse+IT, Kate McDonald 10 May 2019
Up-to-date Health IT informationMost of Pulse+IT’s readers don’t need to be reminded that the My Health Record has come in for some pretty harsh criticism over the last seven years, quite a bit of it emanating from us. In that time there has been a lot to criticise but it’s also fair to say there are loads of true believers out there who have held firm, hoping even in the… Continue reading
American Healthcare: Are we that different?
Katrina Otto, Managing Director & Owner of Train IT Medical, undertook an independent study tour in the United States. She found valuable learnings in relation to both technology use and team based care.
Part 1 – excerpt published in Australian Practice Nurses Association (APNA) ‘Primary Times’, April 2019.
For my 3 week independent US study tour, I was exploring US ‘patient-centred care’ reforms in the US and how technology is being used to support different models of care. What I… Continue reading
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