5-Minute Catchup

The Check-Up | 03 November 2022

Episode Summary

The Check-Up is a weekly news segment of the 5-Minute Catchup, bringing notable news in a convenient medium. In this week’s podcast we’ll talk about new CHN resources, COVID updates, DVA-funded services in general practice, Lung cancer awareness month, MBS changes, CHN education events and more.

Episode Notes

Capital Health Network - QuIKSteps - Digital Health

Department of Health and Aged Care - Affordable medicines to treat skin cancer, lung cancer and ALH

TGA - TGA provisionally approves Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for use as a booster dose in individuals 12 years and older

TGA - TGA provisionally approves Pfizer bivalent COVID-19 vaccine for use as a booster dose in adults

RACGP - What DVA-funded services are available in general practice?

DVA – General practice information

RACGP - Upcoming MBS changes GPs need to know

MBS – November 2022 News

MBS – Current factsheets

Cancer Australia - Lung Cancer Awareness

ACT and SNSW HealthPathways - Suspected Lung Cancer Username: together, Password: forhealth

Capital Health Network - Electronic Prescribing and the Active Script List

Capital Health Network – Educational Events

Capital Health Network – Feedback

Questions? Contact our Primary Care Team via email and we'll be in touch.
primarycare@chnact.org.au

Episode Transcription

Welcome to the five-minute catch up my name is Kate Aigner from the Quality Improvement Team, and this is your weekly Check-up.

In this week’s podcast we’ll talk about new CHN resources, COVID updates, DVA-funded services in general practice, Lung cancer awareness month, MBS changes, CHN education events and more.

To start things off, Capital Health Network has created The Health System Improvement Toolkit to help general practices in their accreditation process. This resource works alongside the RACGP’s Accreditation Standards, providing a brief overview of each standard, the “must haves” and “could haves” for each section with supporting resources to help meet each standard. We recommend you check out the introduction and how to use guide before using the toolkit. The first three core standards are now available with more standards being added each month. See the link below to the toolkit on our website.

Also new to our QuIK Library is our Digital Health QuIK Steps. This resource guides practice staff on how to enable their practice with various digital health tools such as electronic prescriptions and referrals, My Health Record, Canberra Script, Telehealth, and other areas of digital health. The link can be found below.

In COVID news, while nationally the number of patients in intensive care with COVID-19 remains relatively steady, with reduced numbers in hospital overall, there have been over 8,440 prescriptions dispensed for the COVID-19 oral treatments since last week. This is a 20% increase from the previous week.

From 1 November, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 30 years of age and older require only one risk factor rather than 2 to meet the new eligibility requirements for COVID oral antiviral treatments. More details are in the link below.

And, the TGA has provisionally approved Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for use as a booster in people 12 years and older, as well as Pfizer’s bivalent COVID-19 vaccine for use as a booster in adults 18 years and older. ATAGI are yet to inform the Government on their advice for both these boosters. See the links below for more details.

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs, or DVA, has a suite of healthcare resources for veterans which are funded separately to Medicare. The funding supports and services available in general practice are outlined in an article in RACGP’s GPNews. The article covers the importance of identifying veterans, and the tailored services available for Veteran Card holders including annual health checks, mental health services, care coordination, counselling and home care. It also discusses payment and claiming. Links to the GPNews article as well as the general practice section of the DVA website are below.

Now it’s time for the titbits…

November is lung cancer awareness month, a time to raise awareness of the symptoms of the disease which is often not diagnosed until it is well advanced. See the links below to health professional resources on investigating symptoms of lung cancer.
A number of new MBS changes came into effect on 1 November. These include: the removal of cycle-of-care items for cervical screening, diabetes and asthma; changes to melanoma and acupuncture services; and changes to group therapy items under the Better Access initiative. See the links below for more details.
CHN has a number of events coming up in November including the Electronic Prescription webinar on 24 November. See the link below to register and check our Events page to stay up to date on other upcoming events.

Finally, CHN is interested in your feedback. We want to understand what is important to you as this helps us to improve our services to better support you in the future. We’d like to hear what your main issues are this week. Visit the link below and tell us what is on your mind.

And that wraps up your weekly check-up. Did you know that Capital Health Network is always available to answer your queries? If you have any questions about any of the information in this podcast, get in contact with us via email at primarycare@chnact.org.au

Our Quality Improvement Team here at Capital Health Network can assist you and your practice in developing QuIK Cycle Activities – a Plan-Do-Study-Act Quality Improvement Activity which could award participating General Practitioners with RACGP CPD Points by undertaking Self-Directed Quality Improvement. Get in contact with our team to discuss your opportunities for Continuous Quality Improvement.

On behalf of everyone here at Capital Health Network through the ACT’s PHN Program we thank you for tuning in and we’ll see you next Thursday for your next Check-up.

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