Getting your data ready

Using clinical software and audit tools to cleanse data

Practices can use their clinical software or clinical audit tools e.g. Pen CS (CAT4) or POLAR to data cleanse and then identify patients who are eligible for a Heart Health Check.

Data cleansing

Regular data cleansing activities are essential to improving the quality of patient data. This is important as high-quality patient data enables accurate data analysis that can be used to improve patient care. Many tips and instructions on data cleansing are available for software commonly used in general practices. See below for the most commonly used resources.

Best Practice

• Cleaning up data (click on 'cleaning up coded data after conversion' to download a PDF)

MedicalDirector

• Patient database clean-up tips

Pen CS

• CAT4 cleansing 

• Topbar data cleansing app 

Below is a screenshot of the CAT4 CV event risk report showing patients and their risk level as well as the missing clinical information.

POLAR

Below is a screenshot of the CVD report which highlights data quality e.g. out-of-date pathology/measurements and missing clinical information, focused around the requirements under the Australian CVD risk calculation.

For the CVD report, POLAR users can access more information here (login required).

Read next ...

Identifying eligible patients

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