Skip to main content
What is Quality Improvement?
Quality Improvement (QI) is an activity undertaken with the purpose of reviewing, monitoring, evaluating, and improving the quality of services, processes, or experiences delivered at your practice.

Northern Queensland Primary Health Network (NQPHN) is dedicated to assisting providers in engaging in quality improvement activities. This toolkit provides the information required to successfully carry out quality improvement by guiding you through a process of:

  1. ensuring quality data
  2. identifying areas for improvement
  3. planning QI activities
  4. implementing QI activities
  5. evaluating QI activities.

Undertaking QI allows your practice to deliver improved care and health outcomes to people in your community, as well as improving staff wellbeing and increasing the sustainability of your business by reducing costs or finding new revenue streams.

In your practice, QI activities could focus on:

  • safety - avoiding harm to patients
  • effectiveness - providing evidence-based care and only providing services that are likely to be of benefit
  • patient-centered care - providing care that is responsive to each individual patient’s preferences, needs, and values
  • timeliness - reducing waiting times for care and avoiding harmful delays
  • efficiency - avoiding waste
  • equity - providing care of the same quality regardless of personal characteristics such as gender, ethnicity, location, or socio-economic status.[1]

[1] North West Melbourne PHN, Quality Improvement Guide and Tools, Edition 2, pg. 6

This toolkit has been compiled to help you and your practice complete quality improvement (QI) activities.

It has been designed to support your practice in making easy, measurable and sustainable improvements to provide best practice care for your patients.

Download continuous quality improvement toolkit.

Australia currently has three population-based cancer screening programs: Breast Screen Australia, the National Cervical Screening Program, and the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program.

Funded by Queensland Health and delivered by Northern Queensland Primary Health Network (NQPHN), the Cancer Screening Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Program was designed to support healthcare professionals in increasing participation in the National Cancer Screening Program. A list of resources and webinars used throughout the program are available below.

Resources

Cancer Screening CQI Toolkit Bundle 1

  • Cancer Screening and Primary Care
  • Cancer screening eligibility

Cancer Screening CQI Toolkit Bundle 2

  • General Data Management Health Checklist
  • Diagnoses excluded from screening
  • Not overlooking transgender and intersex patients
  • Eligibility of transgender and intersex patients for breast and cervical screening
  • Screening comparisons

Cancer Screening CQI Toolkit Bundle 3

  • Pathology and Screening results

Cancer Screening CQI Toolkit Bundle 4

  • Merging and locking lists
  • Recalls and reminders

Cancer Screening CQI Toolkit Bundle 5

  • Requesting results from screening registries
  • Retrospective data clean-up

Cancer Screening CQI Toolkit Bundle 6

  • Sustainability checklist

Webinars

The following webinars are available on Train IT’s Medical’s website and can be accessed using the Group Code: s41QyiPc

To ensure that First Nations people in North Queensland are receiving the right care, at the right time, and in the right place, NQPHN has committed to delivering a codesigned comprehensive 12-months First Nations Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) program.

Medical practice staff with patient
22 January 2024