Practice Incentives Program Quality Improvement Measures: National report on the first year of data 2020-21

Influenza is a common disease of the respiratory tract. It affects people of all ages. It is estimated that influenza is likely to be associated with more than 3,000 deaths and 13,500 hospitalisations each year in Australia, just in people aged >50 years (ATAGI 2018).

There are a number of groups who are at a higher risk of influenza and its complications. These groups experience higher illness and death associated with influenza than the rest of the population and patients with COPD is one of the vulnerable population groups. Therefore, annual influenza vaccination is strongly recommended for patients with COPD (ATAGI 2018).

People with COPD are considered to be at high risk of complications from influenza. Data from several studies also provide evidence that influenza vaccination has a clinically important protective effect on influenza-related COPD exacerbations, and probably an effect on the total number of exacerbations in COPD patients. The administration of influenza vaccine to persons at risk of complications is the single most important measure in preventing or attenuating influenza infection and preventing mortality. While best practice guidelines recommend annual immunisation, a 15 month interval allows for cases when a client decides to receive a vaccine earlier than recommended (e.g. from a pharmacy), or delay and wait for the release of an ‘enhanced’ vaccine (Department of Health 2020).

Capture of results recorded outside of the general practice setting

Some patients with COPD may receive care from other practitioners in addition to a GP including a specialist physician, and/or other health care providers to safely manage their COPD (Abramson et al. 2014). Results arising from clinical intervention conducted outside of the service that are known and recorded by the practice are included in the measure. Where the immunisation was provided elsewhere (for example, specialist centre, pharmacy, work place etc.) and the information is not recorded in the clinical information system of the client’s usual general practice (for example, due to incompatible clinical information system between a practice and another service), then these data will not be captured in the report.

Other sources of relevant data

Data on prevalence of long-term health conditions like COPD are captured in the National Health Survey (NHS) conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). There are other administrative data collections where the data on influenza immunisation are captured, e.g. the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR).