Merry Christmas & Reflections on 2018

As I prepare for my 56th flight of the year to return home for a Christmas break I reflect on the reasons why 2018 has been one of my favourite years in this 12th year of running my business. For me the reason is the connection to people.

No doubt the  reason I am feeling even more connected to people this year is because we did more consulting, more in-practice and online customised training and helped more aboriginal health services and allied health professionals.

To the 2772 people we trained this year and many more we met along the way, thank you for being so wonderful to work with. 

Thanks also to my extended team and special shout-out to Senior Trainer, Project Manager and Data Guru, Sue Cummins, Many of you have met Sue this year as she too has trained across Australia. An added bonus is when we get to work together.

Training data analysis

  1. The most requested topic has changed from data quality and My Health Record in 2016/17 to how to use data to drive practice improvement.
  2. It was close to a 50/50 split for clinical and non-clinical staff training but in a sign of changes ahead, we also trained Medical Practice Assistants and significantly more Nurse Practitioners.
  3. The breadth of training requests was amazing as we covered Christmas Island to Tasmania.
  4. We visited every single state, many more than once!

In 2018 we also worked on some very exciting projects with CSIRO and national datasets, George Institute and clinical trials, CVD and Polypills as well as Cancer Screening and Hepatitis C projects.

We increased our Practice Management consulting capacity with Virtual Practice Management and eCoaching.  It is a joy for us to see practices thrive. Three of ‘our’ practices and one Practice Manager won major awards for their high achievements and we couldn’t be more thrilled.

Our evaluations continually confirm that we offer a unique benefit to practices with our extensive Practice Management knowledge and varied experience training multiple software programs with practices of all shapes and sizes. It is our improvement goal to share with you more success stories and we have started a library of free Quality Improvement ideas and resources which we will share with you in 2019. Subscribe to our blog or connect on facebook or twitter and we’ll let you know when new free resources are available.

More free gifts

We continue to share our presentations and resources for free wherever we can.
Best Practice users can access a short 10 minute video: Episode 1 in my new series of 10 minute tips: ‘Bp Premier – Indigo ‘Adding Clinically Significant Recalls & Reminders’. I was inspired to make this first in our new video tips series as we discovered many practices had not yet upgraded to Bp Premier Indigo and others who had upgraded were unaware this fabulous new feature was available. There will be updates soon too when the next version is released.

MedicalDirector has an equivalent feature so MD users email us [email protected] and we will send you our latest tips & tricks for advanced use and practice improvements.

Primary Health Networks

Huge thanks to our hard-working PHN colleagues for using our services for training delivery and purchasing supplementary training resources in 2018. Data driven improvements and My Health Record Enablement were the focus topics for our presentations and webinars for Primary Health Networks.

Aboriginal Medical Services 

I wish everyone could meet the incredible aboriginal health workers and AMS teams we get to meet in our travels. Highlights for us this year were working with two of our long-term clients, Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service and Condobolin Aboriginal Heath Service and twice visiting the inspiring Galangoor Duwulami Aboriginal Health Service in Hervey Bay. Here’s a little video I made to share the beauty. We also followed up our 2017 onsite training visits with VACCHO by providing ongoing eCoaching for many Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations. Shoutout to our friends in Victoria.

50 eLearning videos now available 

I have just finished recording 50 videos (you may hear the extra joy in my voice if you listen to number 50). They vary in length from 30-60 mins so check out the list of varied topics here.

Most popular topics so far are:
1. Improving Data Quality
2. Leading your practice into a digital future
3. Recalls and reminders using Best Practice or MedicalDirector Clinical software

And the Top 5 Requested Training Topics for 2018 were:

1.     Using data to drive practice improvements
2.     Recalls, Reminders & Cancer Screening
3.     Best Practice Software
4.     Leading your Practice into a Digital Future
5.     My Health Record

Studying new models of care

Katrina with AMA (NSW) President, Dr Kean Seng Lim

Our interactions with so many practices this year have enriched our lives and depth of understanding of your unique working environments. I have loved consulting for the Health Care Home official and unofficial trial sites and stories of challenges and successes filled many blogs this year.
Read my 2018 blogs here.
Watch highlights from my recent training trip with WAPHA.
Working with our ‘engaged leaders’ was yet another highlight of the year for me.

US Study Tour

Helping our Australian practices as they trial innovative models of care inspired me to head to the US to see for myself the results of their recent transformative patient centred healthcare reform. I feel like I went to 2028! I saw technology and use of that technology that made me green with envy.

My key learning from the study tour is there is huge opportunity in Australia for developing more sustainable and affordable patient-centric models of care. However I also saw some changes I would not want for Australia.  I believe we need to focus on both the patient and the clinician experience if we want a sustainable healthcare system. We need to carefully evolve staffing roles with a risk lens and be selective with how we record and use data to optimise benefits for both patients and the clinicians who care for them.

What to expect in 2019

Themes for 2019 will be expect to share patient data, think innovatively about improvement from a patient perspective and evolve your practice one small continual step at a time. Time to create your vision!

  • Practice Incentive Payments (QIPIP)
  • My Health Record Enablement
  • Meeting new national standards in data quality
  • Health Care Homes and other patient centred models
  • Major changes to your practice software (including Best Practice’s new app and new SMS and portal functionality)

We are expeting big changes in 2019 especially in relation to patient portals, apps, Recalls and Reminders and My Health Record.

We have had unprecedented demand for our services with 19 PHN workshops and 15 days consulting with vendors already booked for the first half of 2019. Please look at your training plan early in the new year and let us know if you would like us to help you.

May you all have a truly wonderful Christmas and happy and healthy New Year.

With best wishes, Katrina Otto & the Train IT Medical team

Scroll to Top