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| Quality Assurance in General Practitioners (BE QUICK - Benchmarking Quality Assurance In Clinical Practice for Hong Kong) |
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Preventive Care Audit Manual |
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PDF download (Word download) |
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1. Introduction Preventive care is the practice of promoting health and preventing or delaying the onset of diseases. It improves the quality of life and reduces the personal and socio-economic burden of patients’ suffering. Throughout the decades, preventive health services have played a key role in reducing the incidence, morbidity and mortality of many infectious and chronic diseases. Primary prevention aims at reducing the likelihood of diseases occurring e.g. by immunization, identifying risk factors and promoting health. Secondary prevention targets early detection and interventions of latent conditions in the asymptomatic phase, e.g. screening for some cancers and diabetes in high-risk groups. Tertiary prevention attempts to prevent or minimize the recurrence, progression and complications of established diseases, e.g. stroke, ischaemic heart disease. In Hong Kong, as in the rest of the world, the trend of medicine is in the preventive care. In the Health Care Reform Document1 in May 2001, the Hong Kong government declared in sections 18-24 that ‘a key responsibility of the Government is to oversee the development of preventive care…. We expect the Department to develop by the end of 2002, a long-term plan for strengthening preventive care as proposed’. The document further recognized in sections 27-36 that primary care physicians play a major role in preventive care and family medicine is a specialized discipline that promotes primary, continuing and comprehensive care. In recent years there has been a flourish of ‘health checks’ requested by the public. Unfortunately many health maintenance organizations, private hospitals and pathology services have been promoting health check packages, which are not evidence-based and have limited cost benefit ratios2. A Clinical Audit on Preventive Care is now available through the College for members to participate in the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) program. In response to these challenges and expectations from the Government and the public, it is appropriate for the Hong Kong College of Family Physicians to take an active and leading role to promote the delivery of cost effective preventive care. |