General Practice BILLING GUIDE - British Columbia Medical ...

APPENDIX ii OTHER TOOLS TO SUPPORT FAMILY PRACTICE IN BC
items and diagnostic codes. As a result, the case definition for a condition may be either
too sensitive or specific, i.e., catching some patients who do not have the condition and
excluding some who do.
Second, there is a time lag between a patient’s encounter with the health system and
the end of the year when the data is complete and available for analysis. For instance,
administrative data for the fiscal year ending March 31 is generally not available until
the fall of the same year and, in the interim, patients may die, move away, move into a
practice, be newly diagnosed, or be rediagnosed with a different condition that would
change their status on the register.
Despite these limitations to the administrative data, probabilistic registers are a good
source of condition-specific information for use by physicians, health authorities, and the
Ministry of Health for the following purposes.
• To estimate performance; for example, the proportion of patients with diabetes
who receive tests such as A1C in a year. Measurement of the changes in these
indicators over time and variation across the province can be very useful when
planning and evaluating programs intended to improve care. Physicians have
also begun to use their own performance data to monitor and improve their
care of patients according to evidence-based clinical guidelines.
• To estimate the prevalence of certain conditions across BC or other geographic
areas or practice settings and to monitor trends and care requirements
over time.
For individual physicians, registers can also help to identify the patients in their practice
with a particular condition. Their key value is that they provide a relatively current list of
patients that can be used by doctors as an aid to building their own practice registers.
Current Probabilistic Registers Registers Under Development
The following registers are available
(based on 2005/06 administrative data)
Asthma Coronary artery disease (CAD)
COPD Dementia
Cerebrovascular - stroke Schizophrenia
Chronic kidney disease (CKD)
CHF
Depression
Diabetes
Hypertension
Osteoarthritis
Osteoporosis
Rheumatoid arthritis
GENERAL PRACTICE BILLING GUIDE
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