How to increase the number of Heart Health Checks being performed in your practice
NOTE: This metric is available to our Best Practice software integration customers.
Cubiko's Quality Improvement cabinets provide a tool for your practice team to use to participate and complete Quality Improvement activities that are specific to your practice. Our Quality Improvement cabinets will allow you to review areas in your practice that may need improvement.
The Quality Improvement: item 699 cabinet provides you with selected Cubiko metrics to help identify the use of Heart Health Checks in your practice and track progress.
To navigate to this metric, go to Clinic Optimisation tab > Quality Improvement > Operational impact tab > Item 699
NOTE: We note that there appears to be conflicting guidance from Medicare: see entry for item 699 (which states all adults 30 years of age or older are eligible) and note AN.14.2 (which states adults 30 years or older who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander or all other adults 45 years or older are eligible).
To accommodate both interpretations of the MBS, we include a filter to enable the inclusion/exclusion of patients aged 30-45 years who do not identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Tick 'Include all adults aged 30-45 years' in the metrics, or leave this unticked to include only Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients younger than 45.
The sections included in this article are:
- What is the problem we want to solve?
- How Cubiko can help
- How to use our QI Item 699 page
- Other ideas to help increase Item 699
What is the problem we want to solve?
Trend of item 699
The QI activities undertaken by your practice can help optimise the care you provide to your patients and minimise harm. This is because it embraces a culture of safety, quality, and transparency, reinforcing the trust, your patients have in your practice.
Increasing the number of Heart Health Checks performed by your practice will improve your patients' outcomes.
This metric shows key measures relating to the use of item 699 in your practice over an extended historical period. This can be used to determine whether this QI activity would suit your practice and to track progress through a PDSA cycle.
In this metric you can view how many item 699 you have billed over the time period selected (default view is the Last 365 days), the total number of patients who are eligible for a Heart Health Check and the potential billings for your practice from those eligible patients.
The Heart Foundation has created a Toolkit for General Practice to help integrate the Heart Health Check into routine patient care. You can access this Toolkit here.
TOP TIP! You can view the trend of your item 699 billings over different time periods by using the date filter at the top of the page. You can also view your data in the graph by day, week or month by using the 'Group by' drop-down filter on the top right-hand side in the metric.
How Cuiko can help
This section will show you the Cubiko metrics you can use to help increase the number of Heart Health Checks performed by your practice. This metric will show you the list of potential 699 patients.
TOP TIP! Use the drop-down box below to filter the list to include patients within the categories:
You can also use the filters on the page to filter by Patients with 3+ appts in 2 yrs to see only your RACGP Active Patients in the list and use the filter Exclude Patients eligible for other Health Assessments to exclude patients who may be eligible for other health assessments.
You can provide access to this cabinet in Viewer Settings for your team members who will be actioning this list.
TOP TIP! Download our Heart Health Check Workflow resource to help implement Heart Health Checks in your practice.
How to use our Quality Improvement: Item 699 page
Follow the steps below to get started with your Quality Improvement activity to increase the number of item 699 being performed in your practice:
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Review your trend of the number of billed item 699 over the selected time period (default view is the Last 365 days).
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Choose a target number of item 699 you want to be able to bill either weekly or monthly by a certain time period (e.g. 3 months).
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Use the 'Potential patients for item 699' table to view which patients you can opportunistically target to book for item 699.
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Print this list for your team to action each day. You can filter and provide this list to each Practitioner as well.
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Review the number of item 699 billed periodically to assess if the steps you have taken have been effective in increasing the number of item 699 performed.
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Record in your PDSA cycle template the steps you have taken, what you have achieved and what you will change for the next cycle.
The Heart Foundation has created a Toolkit for General Practice to help integrate the Heart Health Check into routine patient care, as well as providing information on the Heart Health Check as a Quality Improvement Activity. You can access these resources here.
TOP TIP! Quality Improvement activities assist practices with their Accreditation and PIP QI requirements. You can access Cubiko's PDSA cycle template here. Remember to review your PDSA cycle results with your team, so they can provide feedback and input for the next cycle.
Other ideas to help increase Item 699 in your practice
Below is a list of other ideas to assist in your Quality Improvement activities to increase the number of item 699 being performed in your practice:
- Ensure you have a practice meeting so your whole team is aware of what you are trying to achieve and so you are all working together to achieve your target
- Have posters and brochures available in the waiting room at your practice promoting Heart Health Checks
- Use the patient lists to send bulk SMS to patients to invite them to book for a Heart Health Check
- Implement a reminder system to recall patients where clinically necessary every 12 months
TOP TIP! You can read more about why you should complete Quality Improvement activities in our Blog post: 4 Reasons to complete Quality Improvement Activities.