GPs spend a lot of their time inputting data into their computer system. While much of this is medical info and others have shown how analysing this at scale can be useful e.g. QRISK algorithms et al – there is a wealth of business intelligence in the data that most practices aren’t taking advantage of, to help improve their businesses.
Information on activity, capacity, demand. Information on the performance of different individuals or staff groups. Information on the effect of a change. All of these are lacking.
Apex helps display a lot of this information so that Partners and Practice managers can look at their data and help understand what it is they are doing and plan for the future.
It can help answer questions such as – has employing an extra doctor made any difference? Does the locum every see any patients twice? who is prescribing/referring the most? etc.
Its important that Apex isnt used as a tool to beat people, its a QI tool. To this end, while data cane be agreegated a lcoality, federation or CCG level, the practice gets to decide what is shared. It also never contains patient identifiable data.