Patient focused primary care the way of the future
Australian divisions of general practice could easily transition into primary health care organisations as proposed by the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission, says Australian General Practice Network (AGPN) Chair Dr Emil Djakic.
“There is no point in Government reinventing the wheel. Our Network of local organisations delivering practice support to General Practitioners (GPs) and local health solutions to their communities is ideally placed for this role,” Dr Djakic said.
The Commission called for the creation of primary health care organisations to enhance ‘service coordination and population health planning priorities’ at a local level.
“Put simply, this means improving health outcomes through organised general practice and community care. It means patients who are chronically ill will be better managed and those who are at risk of developing those illnesses are given advice and help to avoid it,” Dr Djakic said.
A national meeting of Network CEOs and Chairs in Adelaide earlier this month determined a set of key principles to ensure primary health care organisations achieve the health benefits for patients
outlined as a priority for Government.
“Patient focused care is the goal, from our perspective. And general practice is the best way to deliver a patient focused system. GPs see their patients regularly, they know their medical histories and often their family’s histories, we need to build on that unique patient-GP relationship as the cornerstone of our system,” he said.
The meeting called on Government to work with them to develop the new organisations, which would incorporate population health and work with allied health professionals, like physiotherapists, to improve health outcomes.
Dr Djakic said many general practice networks were already operating at primary health care organisations, and their communities are seeing the benefit.
“The Network has always responded to community need, members like North and West Queensland, which covers large rural, remote and Indigenous communities run allied health services where GPs are hard to find, they also provide a number of population health and preventive health initiatives in their community such as the creation market gardens to access healthy food,” he said.
However, the system also needed to change to attain the health goals of access, affordability and appropriate care for all Australians, Dr Djakic said.
“eHealth and infrastructure for general practice need to be supported to see improvements in health care across the board,” he said.
