Clinical Queries

Recently, we have had a few clinical queries we wanted to share with you.

These will be making their way into the manuals shortly so that we are all on the same page when including and excluding patients from the datasets.

1) Medication Safety CI 5.4  

Question: We had a query around the definition of sedatives “referring to any oral medication indicated for the treatment of insomnia”.  Did this include melatonin or just benzodiazepines and z-drug hypnotics? 
Answer: The working party determined that it should include melatonin, antidepressants used for insomnia/sleep disturbance, sedating antihistamines if used at night for sleep disturbance and any other meds being used for insomnia/sleep disturbance.

2) Day Patient CI 7.1 

Question: If a patient is delayed by their nominated escort, and you continue your care and accommodation of the patient up until they are collected (discharge point). Does it qualify being an example of a non-clinical reason? 
Answer: That is a great example of non-clinical reason for the delay in discharge. As the indicator only measures clinical reasons for delay. That data is excluded.

3) Oral Health 1.1 and 3.1 

Question: Should the code 572 be utilised in the collection of data for these indicators as it is a provisional restoration? 
Answer: The working party met and discussed this, and it was found that code 572 should be removed from both indicators. We have updated the manual to reflect this.

The POS team has added all the indicators under standard to our collection tool with the first period for potential reporting being the first half of 2023 dataset. These indicators will be reported in the same manner as ACHS indicators and the manuals for these standards are available on the AHCS website under the POS resources section.

If you are interested in submitting these sets and if they are not available for you in PIRT, please contact the POS team and we will facilitate this. Please send requests to pos@achs.org.au.