The Lumos program develops actionable insights that are used to improve patient outcomes and experiences across the health system in NSW, both locally and state-wide.
"The Lumos report provides a clear direction on what is meaningful and impactful for our population." - Dr George Marshall
Dr Mafohla and his team at Oceanside Private Practice have been using the Lumos general practice reports since 2020 to continually improve the care delivered to their patients. Dr Mafohla describes how they've used the practice reports:
“The practice reports are a useful guide to help improve our practice, from day-to-day to more strategic operations. Using the reports, we were able to see our overall patient profile, and we saw that there were high numbers of our patients going to the emergency department during our opening hours.
Several years back, we introduced a different communication model for our patients to help with triaging their health needs, and as a result, we are proud to say that we have seen reduced numbers of our patients at the emergency department, and increased visits to our practice, allowing us to provide the right care at the right time and place. This is a priority for us, especially for our more vulnerable populations.
Lumos is a great driver for improving data quality from the practice level. The quality of data is important for us to really get a good understanding of our patient current and future needs. We are working with other GPs and our PHN to standardise the data input efficiently, so that we can benefit our patients, the population that our PHN services and the health partners we work with like the Ministry of Health. This also gives us the opportunity to develop our practice nurses' data capability, they're interested in what the reports say and how we can use them to continue to improve the care that we deliver."
Looking to the future, Dr Mafohla says:
“In the next few years, we are interested to understand how Urgent Care Services impact our delivery of service. As new services mature, Lumos will be best placed to help us understand how our services interact, and provide an overview of continuity and access of care."
Lumos underpins large-scale improvements and initiaive such as:
Lumos data were used in planning of Collaborative Commissioning programs, including testing different possible scenarios using dynamic simulation modelling techniques, and for ongoing monitoring and evaluation. This ensures that development of value-based health initiatives are informed by reliable data to improve outcomes for patients and the community.
The Lumos program provides unique information about patients enrolled in NSW Integrated Care that aim to improve the coordination of healthcare across services. Lumos data enables us to better understand the interactions of primary and acute health care settings in the patient journey.
Lumos is central to supporting the planning, monitoring evaluation of Urgent Care Service (UCS) that have been rolled out in NSW since 2023. Lumos data can be used to track the de-identified patient journeys across UCS and general practice attendances, Healthdirect virtual service use and hospital visit, to better understand the impact of new services on hospital demand.
For more information on Lumos use in the UCS program, see Anna Stephen's presentation at the 2024 Lumos Symposium. For more information on the program, see Urgent Care Services.
Associate Professor Shamasunder Acharya presented on using Lumos to evaluate the Diabetes Alliance Program Plus (DAP+) initiative at the 2024 Lumos Symposium:
“We want to assist general practices to deliver high quality clinical care for patients with diabetes, and provide easier and rapid access to specialist care as required for people who really need it. We aim to achieve this primarily through intensive case conferencing in the practice. Each practice serves as a quality improvement program.
Since 2016, we have worked with 190 general practices, completing over 6,100 case conferences and 2,600 clinicians have taken part in our master classes.
We are working on healthcare utilization impact at a large scale across primary care and across specialist and the hospital level, and what are the long term impacts on improving someone's glycaemic and metabolic parameters. That's where Lumos comes in."
Stay tuned for Lumos publications from the initiative. Click here for more information on DAP+.
Several Lumos projects centre on chronic diseases, including studies on The impacts of where people with diabetes live, The impact of diabetes managed early in general practices and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).
Lumos is partnering with the Office of the Chief Health Officer, NSW Health, to support the delivery of diabetes priorities under the Future Health Strategy, and the University of New South Wales, Central and Eastern Sydney Primary Health Network, South Eastern Sydney Local Health District and Sydney Local Health District to better understand and refine diabetes care.
“[Lumos] is the standard of effective use of data which the Government would like all regions around Australia to reach" – Future focused primary health care: Australia’s Primary Health Care 10 Year Plan 2022-2032, Australian Government
Cardiovascular risk equations used in Australia are adapted from New Zealand models but had not been validated using Australian data – until now. In an Australian first, using retrospective Lumos data, the Centre for Big Data Research in Health with Western Sydney Primary Health Network have developed and evaluated 5-year cardiovascular risk equations. The next step is to integrate these equations into general practice software, improving early cardiovascular disease detection and prevention through automated risk assessment.
For further information on this study, see Estimating 5-year absolute risk of cardiovascular disease using routinely collected electronic medical records from Australian general practices.
Carefully designed data and digital reform can support primary care providers to increase health care continuity, safety and quality. The Strengthening Medicare Taskforce began work in July 2022 to provide concrete recommendations to the Australian Government on improving patient access to general practice, making primary care more affordable for patients, improving prevention and management of chronic conditions, and reducing pressure on hospitals. Lumos findings regarding continuity of care were central to Taskforce discussions.
Lumos plays an integral role in delivering against the Taskforce's recommendations to modernise primary care: to better connect data across all parts of the health system, underpinned by robust national governance and legislative frameworks, regulation of clinical software and improve technology helps to modernised primary care.
For further information, see Strengthening Medicare Taskforce Report | Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing
