July 2024

Exploration of chronic kidney disease screening, diagnosis and management in Australian general practice using electronic medical record data

Daniel Petzke,¹ Christine Hallinan,¹ Judy Trevena,¹ Jo-Anne Manski-Nankervis^1,2
 

¹Department of General Practice and Primary Care, Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Vic

²Primary Care and Family Medicine, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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Background and objectives

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) places a significant burden on health systems globally. The objective of this study is to assess CKD detection and management in Australian primary care.

Methods

In this study, a set of 16 quality indicators for CKD detection and management were applied to a large Australian primary care dataset.

Results

Among the 362,078 patients, 24,348 had a diagnosis or pathology consistent with CKD, of whom 28.1% had an actual diagnosis recorded. Among undiagnosed patients with an initial estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) below 60, 54.2% underwent a repeat eGFR and 28.8% an albumin creatinine ratio within six months. Monitoring of patients with CKD was slightly better. Blood pressure was recorded within the last nine months in 71.1% of these patients, of whom 45% were meeting their targets.

Discussion

The results demonstrate the feasibility of deriving meaningful and informative indicators of CKD diagnosis and management from primary care data.