Better health and ageing for all Australians

Quality Assurance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Medical Services

Quality Assurance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Medical Services (QAAMS) Pathology program

The Australian Government has funded the Quality Assurance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Medical Services (QAAMS) pathology program since 1999 to support the provision of culturally appropriate and clinically effective diabetes management in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The program supports better management of diabetes by enabling participating Aboriginal Medical Services (AMS) and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services (ACCHS) to provide accurate diabetes-related pathology testing on site through ‘point of care testing’.

This program contributes to ‘closing the gap’ on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disadvantage by helping to avoid the poor health outcomes that are associated with unmanaged diabetes in a population where diabetes is diagnosed at an estimated rate of more than three times that of the general population.

Many of the sites participating in the QAAMS program are in rural and remote locations across Australia where there is poor or no access to rapid pathology testing for the management of diabetes in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The QAAMS program overcomes this by providing ‘point of care’ pathology testing with a six minute test time to allow appropriate treatment and management of diabetes while the patient is still present.

The two pathology tests that are currently used in the QAAMS program are;

  • glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) – quantitation in blood, which shows how well glucose levels are being managed; and
  • microalbumin or the albumin:creatinine ratio (ACR), which detects early stage renal disease, an adverse outcome of poorly managed diabetes.
These pathology tests are specific to the QAAMS program and are only available for Medicare reimbursement if the health service is enrolled in the QAAMS program and the medical practitioner has the Medicare Benefit Schedule speciality code 601 (Indigenous health).

The QAAMS program provides training, technical support, a quality assurance program and a consultation program to support the point of care pathology testing at participating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health care sites so as to improve the management of diabetes in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The operators of the “point of care” device at participating ACCHS and AMS sites must undertake a competency training program and meet the quality control and assurance program targets. The QAAMS quality and training framework has enabled the participating services to achieve an equivalent quality of pathology testing to that achieved in conventional pathology laboratories.

The Australian Government has provided $3.8 million over four years from 1 July 2010 to expand the number of sites enrolled in the QAAMS program from 120 sites in 2008-09 to 170 sites at the end of the 2012-13 financial year.

The QAAMS program is administered on behalf of the Department by the Flinders University Rural Clinical School and the RCPA Quality Assurance Programs Pty Ltd. More information is available at QAAMS website or by contacting the Director, Chronic Disease Programs Section on (02) 6289 2548.