Dr Edwin Kruys*

General practice has been sitting on a goldmine of digital data, locked away on hard drives in our practices all over the country. And while we were busy looking after our patients, others have quietly started mining it for us.

While the monetary value of general practice data remains debatable, there are other good things we can do with it, such as research, benchmarking and quality improvement. Of course, there are also a lot of bad things that can happen when our data is used in the wrong way or for the wrong purposes.

For example, health administrators around the world have been looking for ways to improve quality of care by combining data analysis, performance of healthcare providers and financial incentives.

A recent study published recently in the British Journal of General Practice, ‘Effectiveness of UK provider financial incentives on quality of care: a systematic review’, found that financial incentives may be counterproductive to their goal of improving healthcare quality and efficiency and, if used, should be subject to careful long-term monitoring and evaluation.

As we speak, general practice data is flowing from our practices to various third parties, including Primary Health Networks, My Health Record, NPS MedicineWise and FredIT, owned by the Pharmacy Guild.

Interestingly, data governance contracts are often light-on, non-existent or allow others to use the data as they see fit. At the same time, our only continuous national source of general practice data, the BEACH study, has had to shut down as it no longer receives government funding.

The common denominator here is that general practice is about to lose control over its data.

Clearly, there is a hole in our bucket that needs to be fixed. If not, I’m afraid Australian general practice will be unable to stand on its own two legs in the not-too-distant future.

*Dr Edwin Kruys is author of the Doctor’s Bag health blog, and immediate past RACGP Vice President and RACGP Queensland Chair.

This article first appeared on the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners website.