Evaluation of multidisciplinary care plans for patients with diabetes [ 2003 - 2003 ]

Research Grant

Researchers: Prof Nicholas Zwar (Principal investigator) ,  A/Pr Elizabeth Comino ,  Joan Burns ,  Prof Mark Harris

Brief description Care planning for patients with chronic illnesses and complex needs is a major part of the Commonwealth Enhanced Primary Care package. This initiative, announced in late 1999, provides access to Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) items to remunerate general practitioners, involved in developing multidisciplinary care plans in cooperation with other health care providers. An issue of importance, and the one that this project investigates, is whether disease specific care is addressed in care plans and whether the care planning process is associated with improved provision and outcomes of care for a specific chronic illness. The chronic illness that has been chosen for this research project is diabetes because of its prevalence in the community, importance in general practice and because there are accepted standards of process and outcomes of care against which diabetes care contained in EPC care plans can be bench marked. Diabetes is estimated to affect 7.5% of the adult Australian population with more than 85% of those affected having type 2 or mature onset diabetes. Increasingly care of type 2 diabetes is provided in primary care under share care arrangements with specialist diabetes services and in a multidisciplinary team approach involving the patient and their carer as well as relevant health professionals. A recent review has shown that there is a lack of evidence on whether multidisciplinary care is associated with improved process and outcomes of diabetes care. The project will involve 50 general practitioners and 200 of their patients with diabetes in South West Sydney. The design of the project involves audit of the care plans to examine the extent and quality of the diabetes care contained in comparison to accepted benchmarks. The project will also audit the patients' medical records for the year of care before and after the care plan. This care will be compared to published guidelines for process of care and goals for outcomes.

Funding Amount $AUD 83,500.00

Funding Scheme NHMRC Project Grants

Notes Standard Project Grant