Diabetes Cycle of Care
Having recently visited a number of practices participating in Australian Primary Care Collaboratives I was repeatedly asked about how to manage diabetes cycle of care using their clinical software.
There are specific tools in both Medical Director and Best Practice for tracking the diabetes cycle of care, Diabetes Record (under Clinical menu) in Medical Director and Diabetes Cycle of Care (under Enhanced Primary Care section) in Best Practice. Both allow you to track the required elements of the diabetes care cycle.

The importance of correct data entry and correct pathol- ogy format are especially crucial in diabetes care. If you record the height, weight and blood pressures in the correct fields ie. height and weight and blood pressure cal- culator rather than free texting them into progress notes these will auto-populate the relevant fields.

Similarly, it is crucial to use the HL7 pathology format as HbA1c, cholesterol, microalbumin and triglyceride values will come across automatically into the relevant fields. If you are still using the PIT pathology these values will not go into the relevant fields in the diabetes record. All it takes is a phone call to your pathology provider and switching over to HL7 is a matter of minutes at the pathology provider’s end.

The other values, for regular eye and feet examinations are entered manually to complete the cycle of care using Add Values button of the Diabetes Record in Medical Director or using Add New Values button of Diabetes Cycle of Care in Best Practice.

Medical Director will also need to complete the Diabetes Assessment accessed via the Assessment button in the Diabetes Record.

Once all the required items are completed the Diabetes Register will display the items that have been completed and the ones still outstanding, allowing you better management of diabetes patients.
If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact me on 8752 4912.