Victorian ambulatory care sensitive conditions study

The Health Surveillance and Evaluation Section, Public Health Group, has been responsible for initiation of the Victorian Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions (ACSCs) study.

ACSCs are those for which hospitalisation is thought to be avoidable with the application of Public Health interventions and early disease management, usually delivered in ambulatory setting such as primary care. High rates of hospital admissions for ACSCs may provide indirect evidence of problems with patient access to primary healthcare, inadequate skills and resources, or disconnection with specialist services.

The Victorian ACSCs study has the following goals:

• To develop an initial set of indicators for ACSCs with a focus on chronic diseases, National Health Priority Areas, and vaccine preventable conditions.
• To use these indicators for assessing the current performance of the health system.
• To develop a surveillance system for continuous monitoring and analysis of these indicators.

Information on the Victorian ACSCs includes:

Preliminary analyses
Report outlining the potential for a new set of indicators describing differentials and inequalities in access to the primary healthcare system in Victoria.

Targetted interventions
Report demonstrating opportunities for targeted interventions for reducing demand on hospital services.

Diabetes complications
Report providing a detailed analysis of specific diabetes complications, with regional and community (PCP-level) profiles for long and short-term complications to support community planning and evaluation.

Report 2001-2002
Report identifying gaps in the delivery of primary health care services in rural and regional Victoria, and offering opportunities for targeting public health and health services interventions that can decrease access barriers, improve adequacy of primary care and reduce the call on the hospital system in Victoria. More specifically, this report identifies trends in hospitalisations, urban/rural differentials, regional variations and variations by PCPs.

The Victorian Ambulatory Sensitive Conditions Study is updated annually by the Health Surveillance and Evaluation Section of the Department of Human Services (DHS). These fact sheets present analyses of ACSCs for the DHS regions/PCP partnerships and Victoria as a whole using the Victorian Admitted Episodes Dataset (VAED) from 1993–94.

Update 2002-2003

Update 2004-2005

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