 Building the Agenda
the first national forum on Safety and Quality in Primary and Community Health
Sydney, 10 May 2010
Attended by Libby Kalucy, PHC RIS
This one day Forum was a refreshing change from events where supposed ‘participants’ spend long periods of time sitting passively in front of PowerPoint presentations, only coming to life during the breaks.
Julie McCrossin is an energetic knowledgeable facilitator who interviewed the speakers, and brought in many of the large number of delegates attending the forum, and she ensured that many of their stories were heard.
So what did we learn about safety and quality in primary and community health? There are pockets of good work in an inconsistent national picture. Julie encouraged the audience to think of metaphors - I liked the image of the safety and quality garment with many pockets but no back or front to hold it together – the garment could store lots of things, but did little to maintain decency or keep the wearer dry and warm.
Accreditation is synonymous with discussions of safety and quality, though the range of relevant standards is confusing. More than a flurry of activity at accreditation time is needed to build a sustained culture of safety and quality. Primary and community health need systems that support reflective practice, that provide a safe framework to share uncomfortable truths, and that provide the right information for all levels of the system to measure, share and evaluate quality and safety matters. Unless patients and communities are an integral part of the system, service providers may remain blissfully unaware of occasions of unsafe, poor quality services. Organisations must be expert in all forms of governance, corporate, community and clinical, to deliver safe high quality primary and community health services with minimal risk to communities.
For details of Forum presentations and notes go to <www.latrobe.edu.au/aipc/pchnetwork/national.htm>
Libby Kalucy attended the Forum on behalf of PHC RIS which is a member of the National Primary and Community Health Network.
 Progressing rural and remote health research
2nd Rural and Remote Health Scientific Symposium
9-11 June 2010
Attended by Ellen McIntyre, Libby Kalucy & Sandy Muecke, PHC RIS
The following report has been condensed from a more comprehensive communiqué released by the symposium steering committee. The full report is available from the National Rural Health Alliance website at <http://nrha.ruralhealth.org.au/scientific/>
Leaders of Australia’s rural and remote health research communities met in Brisbane, 9-11 June 2010, at the 2nd Rural and Remote Health Scientific Symposium, and reached general agreement about the way forward for their sector over the next five years.
Since the emergence of ‘rural and remote health’ as a discreet entity in Australia some 20 years ago, its research sector has moved from being largely defensive and focused on rural and remote deficits, to one with an emphasis on building on the strengths of rural and remote lifestyles, people and services. With increasing confidence, capacity and understanding, the rural and remote health research communities are now more outward-looking, ready to challenge themselves and to be involved in current policy issues. Increasingly, their focus is on helping to transform the health sector rather than merely describing it.
The Symposium was provided with updates on research in critical areas such as the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, mental health in remote areas (including some consideration of suicide), the capacity of eHealth to improve services and outcomes, creative models of care, and the importance of cohort studies – including those relating to complex interventions.
The central recommendation from the Symposium was that there should be a high-level organisation with the capacity to coordinate the rural and remote health research effort and build from its findings into practice and policy.
The Symposium spent some time considering the capacity of rural and remote health researchers to contribute to the current health reform agenda. To be able to play their role more effectively, researchers need to understand the complex realities of policy development, which is affected by both scientific and political ‘evidence’, by advocacy and vested interests, by ad hocand entirely unpredictable personal and/or political events, and by the fact that many policies entail the redistribution of resources – which means there will usually be losers.
 Connecting the Health Care Sector
AGPN eHealth Conference
16-17 June 2010
Attended by Sandy Muecke, PHC RIS
The Australian General Practice Network hosted the Connecting the Health Care Sector eHealth Conference in Melbourne, 16-17 June 2010. Over 150 representatives from GP Divisions, the Department of Health and Ageing, Medicare, consumer organisations, software companies, universities and other organisations attended.
The Hon Nicola Roxon opened the event, via a tele-link from Canberra. Ms Rosemary Huxtable, Deputy Secretary, Department of Health and Ageing, followed by Mr Peter Fleming, CEO of the National E-Health Transition Authority, outlined the eHealth roll-out plan. Australians are soon to be allocated a 16 digit numeric ‘unique health identifier’, and will be able to voluntarily enroll in the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) scheme from 1 July 2012. These records will not hold details of specific clinical encounters but will contain information such as patient demographics, a health summary, referrals, current medications, test orders and care plans. The roll-out will occur incrementally, and South Australia will be an early adopter of ‘secure messaging’. ‘Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms’ will ensure a common language is used. The pivotal role of Medicare Australia was detailed by Malisa Golightly, Deputy CEO of Medicare Australia.
Population health planning and chronic disease management were the themes for the Table Top presentations. About eight presenters moved from table to table and gave a brief report to delegates. The former presentations included several innovative IT programs that aimed to improve communication between health care providers or collect and aggregate population health related data. Chronic disease management presentations included projects that had implemented secure messaging IT systems or improved the coordination of care. Several other speakers gave concurrent, more detailed presentations about these two topics. Throughout Australia it appears that a diverse range of successful and novel electronic systems and programs have been implemented by Divisions and individual general practices to suit their specific small-area population health needs.
 Selling health research to the government
Research Australia Adelaide Policy Forum
2 June 2010
Attended by Libby Kalucy, Ellen McIntyre, Petra Bywood, Sandra Muecke & Eleanor Jackson Bowers
A panel of distinguished speakers discussed policy issues related to health research and strategies for building a business case for growth in the health and medical research sector. Rebecca James, CEO of Research Australia, facilitated the forum.
Professor Caroline McMillen (University of SA) opened the forum with an outline of the challenges related to policy and research: improving the evidence base in health care; connecting health research and education; and broadening the health care workforce. In the current complex research environment, Professor McMillen stressed that health researchers need to take advantage of the ‘perfect storm’ of change in three fundamental areas: the NHMRC research agenda, hospital and health care reform and university reform that is focused on sustainable research excellence.
Rebecca James outlined three key requirements for Selling health research to the government: affordability, policy relevance and political attractiveness. Rebecca suggested that health research needs to be embedded into new approaches and linked to better health outcomes in a quantifiable way that is attractive to policy-makers; that unity was critical and researchers should share the responsibility, acknowledging that we are all part of the problem as well as part of the solution. Finally, she noted how crucial it is for researchers to demonstrate the value of research to policy-makers and foster strong advocacy for health research.
Professor Alan Pearson of the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) gave an overview of the JBI and its resources and services for bridging the gap between research and policy. JBI has valuable resources pertaining to evidence synthesis, including databases of systematic reviews and best practice information sheets, evidence transfer- JBI Connect, International Journal of Evidence-based Healthcare - and evidence implementation and evaluation tools.
Professor Ross McKinnon, National Facilitator for the Translating Health Discovery Super Science Project, gave valuable insights into the Translating Health Discovery project that invests in research infrastructure related to the translational landscape.
Finally, Sinéad O’Brien, Deputy Executive Director, Statewide Service Strategy, SA Health, discussed South Australia’s health reform. The SA Health Care Plan is a blueprint for change and a key strategy for delivering this Plan is use of primary health care to establish more GP Plus Health Care Centres to ease the pressure on emergency departments and relieve the workload on hospital-based medical staff.
<http://researchaustralia.org/RA/Events/ResearchAustraliaEvents.aspx>
|
