Health Insurance (Quality Assurance Activity – BreastSurgANZ Quality Audit) Declaration 2020

I, BRENDAN MURPHY, delegate for the Minister for Health, make the following declaration under section 124X of the Health Insurance Act 1973.

Dated 12 June 2020  

Prof. Brendan Murphy

Chief Medical Officer

Department of Health

Contents

Part 1 — Preliminary 1

1  Name

2  Commencement

3  Authority

4  Cessation

5  Schedule

Schedule 1— Description of quality assurance activity

1  Name of activity ............................................2

2  Description of activity.........................................2

Part 1— Preliminary

1  Name

  This declaration is the Health Insurance (Quality Assurance Activity – BreastSurgANZ Quality Audit) Declaration 2020.

2  Commencement

 (1) Each provision of this instrument specified in column 1 of the table commences, or is taken to have commenced, in accordance with column 2 of the table. Any other statement in column 2 has effect according to its terms.

Note: This table relates only to the provisions of this instrument as originally made. It will not be amended to deal with any later amendments of this instrument.

 (2) Any information in column 3 of the table is not part of this instrument. Information may be inserted in this column, or information in it may be edited, in any published version of this instrument.

3  Authority

  This declaration is made under subsection 124X(1) of the Health Insurance Act 1973.

4  Cessation

 This declaration will cease to be in force at the end of 5 years after the date on which it is signed.

5  Schedule

  The quality assurance activity described in the Schedule to this Declaration is, to the extent that the quality assurance activity relates to health services provided in Australia, declared to be a quality assurance activity to which Part VC of the Health Insurance Act 1973 applies.

Schedule 1— Description of quality assurance activity

1 Name of activity:
 

Breast Surgeons of Australia and New Zealand Quality Audit.

2 Description of activity:

This declaration applies to the Breast Surgeons of Australia and New Zealand (BreastSurgANZ) Quality Audit (BQA).

The BQA is a clinical audit that collects breast cancer surgery information from breast surgeons. The BQA compares surgeons’ clinical results with Quality Thresholds for Key Performance Indicators set by the BQA Subcommittee, relating to a patient’s optimal care pathway.

The BQA promotes collaborative research to improve breast cancer care through teaching, research, and the development of evidence-based strategies that monitor individual members' surgical performance and improve outcomes using evidence based benchmarks produced from the audit. Surgeons may access their own data and analyse aggregate data from the BQA to establish an evidence base to make changes in recommended treatments to improve breast surgery outcomes. The BQA also includes the implementation of the BreastSurgANZ Clinical Quality Improvement Program Policy as approved by the BreastSurgANZ Council on 27 March 2020.

The BQA activity will be engaged in by the BreastSurgANZ, which is a specialty society for surgeons treating breast cancer.  

This declaration follows the previously declared activity QAA 6/2015. This declaration is likely to encourage a greater level of participation than the previously declared activity.