NOTE: This metric is currently available to our Best Practice software integration customers.
IMPORTANT!
To be included in the cohort aggregation and to view the following quality improvement metrics, a clinic must both opt in to touchstone and provide clinical consent to the Cubiko viewers at your practice.
If you can't see the Touchstone cabinet, please ensure that you have opted-in!
If you cannot see an option to opt-in, it is likely that you do not have the viewer permission to do so, please contact the team member in your practice with these permissions (usually the practice owner or your practice manager).
To add clinical permissions to a viewer in your team, head to Settings > Viewers > Select person > Clinical Permissions > Yes
Unlock your practice's full potential with Touchstone: Quality Improvement! Touchstone is our de-identified aggregated dataset for industry benchmarking.
To navigate to Touchstone, go to Benchmarking tab > Touchstone: Quality Improvement
The sections included in this article relating to Touchstone are:
Touchstone QI Overview
Being able to review your Touchstone Quality Improvement data means you can make informed decisions on QI measures for your practice. You will be able to see your own practice's completion rate for each of the 10 Department of Health PIP QI measures, and view how your practice compares to your cohort. The ability to set a target means you can track your progress and reach your goals.
When you navigate to the Touchstone: Quality Improvement cabinet, you will see that there is a graph showing the QIM Benchmarking Overview. This will show you your percentage for the time period selected.
Underneath you will find tabs for each QIM activity. Clicking into these tabs will give you a detailed breakdown of the data in each of those QIM activities.
TOP TIP! Would you like to set targets for your PIP QI measures? Head to Settings > QI Goals. More info can be found here: Setting Targets and Budgets
The Touchstone: Quality Improvement cabinet is designed to give you insights and comparison with your cohort. To work on any QI activities, including patient lists and further data, head to Clinic Optimisation tab > Quality Improvement > Patient Impact tab. You can also download our free PDSA template from within that cabinet to record progress.
Filters
Use the filters in the sidebar to select the Cohort data you would like to see in this metric to gain insight on how your practice compares to the cohort average and your own practice target.
This filter allows you to compare with practices that are just like yours (apples and apples) because we know there are differences between a MMM1 and MMM5 practice, and Bulk billing and Mixed Billing practices. This can help you to have a clearer perspective on understanding your data.
Date range: By default the previous month is displayed. You can click on the date to show other time periods to your search comparison.
State: Filtering by a single state or multiple states allows comparison against practices located within your practice location or against other states in Australia. Multiple states can be chosen in the filter.
MMM Classification: Using this filter allows you to compare different MMM classifications to match your own practice.
PHN location: Individual PHN's can be chosen for comparison to your local PHN or against other PHN locations. Also, you can choose a single PHN cohort comparison or against multiple PHN locations.
Practice size: Choosing from the list of FTE number groupings that match your practice allows for a more accurate comparison based on your practice size. Or you can compare your practice to larger or smaller practices.
Billing structure: You can compare your practice against predominantly Bulk Billing or mixed/private billing practices. For example, you may like to just initially see the cohort data on billing structures if you are a predominantly bulk billing practice, to do a top-level comparison of bulk billing practices Australia wide.
Registrars: Choosing this filter allows you to compare your practice against the cohort containing practice's that have or do not have a registrar within their practice.
NOTE: Touchstone is a new feature in Cubiko and as it grows, so will our data set. When using the filters, it could be possible that you see this message: Not enough practices in query, which means we do not have enough practices opted in for this demographic, so no results will be shown.
Use the download arrow option to download any graphs for your PDSA's or reporting needs.
What does the data mean?
Each QIM measure has comparison information on your clinic according to the chosen filters.
You will have key insights showing a snapshot of how your clinic is doing as a percentage, showing your practice target (if set) and how your chosen cohort is performing in comparison. The cohort will depend on any filters you have set.
The Touchstone QIM spread shows your cohort comparison using box plots. Box plots are a useful way to visualise data distributions, making it easy to see the “middle” values (medians) and overall spread while quickly highlighting any potential outliers. You will see a clear snapshot of how values cluster and differ across the cohort in a single compact graph.
At Cubiko, we have defined our box plots for Touchstone to highlight how clinics are clustered across the industry whilst ensuring that practice anonymity is protected, this might mean a slightly different application than what you might be used to.
The Cubiko cohort spread metrics in Touchstone are defined as the following from top to bottom:
- The top horizontal line is the top 10% of practices (meaning that 10% of practices are above this line).
- The top of the box is the top 25% of practices.
- The middle line of the box is the median, meaning 50% of practices are above and below this line.
- The bottom of the box is the bottom 25% of practices.
- The bottom horizontal line is the bottom 10% of practices (meaning that 10% of practices are below this line).
An example of a uniform spread of data from 0% to 100% is shown below;
However, not all data is spread uniformly. The example below shows a situation where the values are ‘skewed’ towards the top of the metric but most clinics are clustered closer to the 50%.
In practice, you could find that whilst your own practice may have values below the cohort average, your practice performance is actually above that of 50% of practices in your cohort. The box plot seeks to highlight the nuance of these situations and provide further clarity on your clinic and how it compares to the cohort.
TOP TIP! It’s important to note that we do not calculate outliers and the values presented are a rounded approximation so as to keep clinic information anonymised.
The Touchstone QIM trend lines show you the a comparison of your clinic over time in comparison to your chosen cohort for a particular QI measure.
When hovering over individual points in time you will see the percentage information for your own clinic, the cohort average and your own practice target (if you have set a target measure in settings).
Additional Resources
- Patient Impact: Quality Improvement - To work on any QI activities, including patient lists and further data, head to Clinic Optimisation tab > Quality Improvement > Patient Impact tab. You can also download our free PDSA template to track progress.
- Setting Targets and Budgets - To add and update your QI targets head to Settings > QI Goals.
- Opt-in to Touchstone - If you can't see the Touchstone cabinet, please ensure that you have opted-in! If you cannot see an option to opt-in, it is likely that do not have the permission to do so, please speak with the team member in your practice with these permissions (usually the practice owner or practice manager).
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To add clinical permissions to a viewer in your team, head to Settings > Viewers > Select person > Clinical Permissions > Yes