Event

Primary Care Practice Transformation is Hard Work

Australia is embarking on a journey of primary care reform. The COAG Health Council has identified new long-term system wide reforms that focus on better coordinated care, the Health Care Home Programme has commenced, shifts to practice incentives for quality improvement are afoot and Primary Health Networks are working regionally to strengthen primary care.  The patient needs to be at the centre of all these reform directions.
 
The George Institute for Global Health, the Consumers Health Forum and the UQ-MRI Centre for Health System Reform and Integration hosted a breakfast forum to discuss the challenges facing primary care innovation and how to overcome them. The wide-ranging discussions covered multiple topics including:

  • How technology can be an enabler of reform but is not the end solution. Health systems must always ask ‘how can technology improve the patient experience?'
  • How to provide consumers of the health system with continuity of care once they leave the hospital.
  • How to encourage more public engagement with the health system outside of times of crisis, when there is a typically a rise in public attention.
  • How the health system could better utilise the existing workforce and make it more efficient instead of creating more roles and complexities.

This breakfast forum was a precursor to a Primary and Integrated Care Thought Leadership Roundtable to be held later in 2018, part of CHF’s Consumers Shaping Health Thought Leadership Roundtable series.

Further reading