Driving improvement through Priority Focus Areas

The CEI­H’s Pri­or­i­ty Focus Areas (PFAs) con­tin­ue to bring togeth­er clin­i­cians, con­sumers and part­ners to address some of the most impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ties for improve­ment across South Aus­trali­a’s health system.

Recent progress has focused on strength­en­ing data and gov­er­nance, improv­ing clin­i­cal prac­tice and build­ing the foun­da­tions for sus­tain­able sys­tem-wide improvement.

Sep­sis Improvement

The Sep­sis Improve­ment project has been defin­ing the scope of its work, with a focus on sup­port­ing bet­ter mon­i­tor­ing and clin­i­cal insights and stronger adher­ence to the Nation­al Clin­i­cal Care Standard.

Three pri­or­i­ty work­streams have been iden­ti­fied, including:

• Sur­veil­lance, clin­i­cal infor­mat­ics and EMR enable­ment – devel­op­ment of a statewide sep­sis sur­veil­lance def­i­n­i­tion, LHN-lev­el data and clin­i­cal improve­ment tools, and EMR-enabled sep­sis support.
• Sep­sis aware­ness and capa­bil­i­ty – strength­en­ing ear­ly recog­ni­tion and esca­la­tion path­ways, improv­ing work­force edu­ca­tion and train­ing, explor­ing sep­sis care coor­di­na­tion, and increas­ing com­mu­ni­ty and pri­ma­ry care awareness.
• Pae­di­atric and Abo­rig­i­nal health – a ded­i­cat­ed focus on sep­sis in chil­dren, sur­veil­lance, Abo­rig­i­nal neona­tal and child health out­comes, and the role of fam­i­ly con­cern in recog­ni­tion and escalation.

A key fea­ture of the project will be its learn­ing health sys­tem approach which will strength­en the use of data, audit and feed­back process­es, and LHN-led qual­i­ty improve­ment activ­i­ties to sup­port ongo­ing improve­ment in sep­sis care.

Clin­i­cal Registries

The Clin­i­cal Reg­istries project is pro­gress­ing a statewide roadmap to strength­en gov­er­nance, dig­i­tal inte­gra­tion and the use of data to sup­port bet­ter patient out­comes and ser­vice improvement.

Con­sul­ta­tion and cur­rent-state analy­sis have now been com­plet­ed, with gov­er­nance groups estab­lished and work under­way across four pri­or­i­ty workstreams:

• oper­at­ing frame­work and governance
• reg­is­ter of Clin­i­cal Registries
• dig­i­tal inte­gra­tion and data capture
• sus­tain­able resource and invest­ment strategy.

The project aims to cre­ate a more coor­di­nat­ed and sus­tain­able clin­i­cal reg­istries ecosys­tem that sup­ports evi­dence-informed deci­sion-mak­ing and con­tin­u­ous improve­ment across SA Health.

The Clin­i­cal Reg­istries work was fea­tured ear­li­er in the year in the CEIH Inno­va­tion and Improve­ment Show­case Series 19.

Rheumat­ic Fever and Rheumat­ic Heart Disease

The Rheumat­ic Fever and Rheumat­ic Heart Dis­ease project has com­plet­ed its dis­cov­ery phase and is now work­ing with its new­ly estab­lished steer­ing com­mit­tee to refine pri­or­i­ties and next steps.

Cur­rent work is focused on under­stand­ing the exist­ing land­scape, includ­ing data sys­tems and access to echocar­dio­g­ra­phy, while engag­ing stake­hold­ers to iden­ti­fy bar­ri­ers, gaps and oppor­tu­ni­ties for improvement.

Peo­ple involved in projects or ini­tia­tives relat­ed to rheumat­ic fever or rheumat­ic heart dis­ease are encour­aged to con­tact the team at CEIH.​RheumaticFever@​sa.​gov.​au.