Virtual Waves

A Virtual Collaboratives wave is designed to allow greater learning flexibility for practices to participate in the Australian Primary Care Collaboratives (APCC) Program without leaving their practice to attend state or local workshops.

A Virtual wave begins with an orientation session where practices will be introduced to the virtual wave and how it will operate. The virtual workshops and support are delivered online, via iPresent, teleconference, or other interactive media as an alternative to face-to-face communication. This generally requires less time out of practice than other workshop styles and may suit practices where travel or other constraints do not readily allow time away from the practice.

In between workshops, practices will have time called ‘activity periods’ where you’ll be able to use the Model for Improvement and PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act) cycles to implement changes in small manageable cycles and identify where change actually leads to improvement.

Results

There were two virtual waves delivered as part of Phase 1 of the APCC Program. Virtual practices participating in the first phase of the Program achieved some outstanding improvements:

  • 74% improvement in the number of patients on a statin
  • 99% improvement in the number of patients with CHD whose last recorded blood pressure within the last 12 months was less than 140/90mmHg
  • 379% improvement in the percentage of patients with diabetes whose last measured total cholesterol was less than 4 mmol/l within the previous 12 months
  • 158% improvement in the number of patients with diabetes whose last recorded blood pressure within the last 12 months was less than or equal to 130/90mmHg within the previous 12 months
  • 29% improvement in the percentage of patients with diabetes that had a diabetes Service Incentive Payment (SIP) claimed for them within the last 12 months.
  • These results are relative to baseline and an aggregate of two virtual waves in Phase 1 as at Dec 2007

 

 

If you would like to know more about the APCC Virtual waves you can download the Virtual Wave brochure, speak to your Division, or contact Improvement Foundation.

Last Updated 15 April 2010