Conference reports

World Health Care Networks – Inaugural Conference

Auckland, July 22-24 2010
Libby Kalucy, PHC RIS

The focus of this inaugural conference was on clinically-led networks and their role in health systems in the future. The conference was co-hosted by the Australian General Practice Network and GP New Zealand. Both countries have well developed general practice networks facing substantial change as a result of health reforms making the timing of the meeting particularly opportune for the 500 delegates from NZ, Australia, USA, Canada and UK.

Discussions from the conference highlighted a number of key points crucial to developing networks:

• Networks developed from the ground up by primary care clinicians are more likely to have patients and their families at their centre than those developed from the top down.
• The form and size of networks depends on their purpose – larger networks are required to deal with the financial risk of budgeting for a population, and smaller networks for coordinating service delivery. Small provider networks may join together for larger scale purposes but it is important not to replace what you have in order to form an entity with another purpose.
• Networks of networks are needed to bridge the professions within primary care, within health care, and within all sectors which affect health.
  Leadership is vital for networks to function effectively, either clinical leadership or with clinically intelligent managers working with managerially intelligent clinicians.
• Health reform requires a change in health care delivery, not just payment systems. Ideally the role of the centre (ie. government funding body) is to create a policy environment that enables clinical managers to do the best work.
• Five forms of contracting/commissioning could provide integrated care which imposes the patient’s perspective on the system, including: a series of contracts with providers; managed networks; new organisational forms; clinical partnerships and alliance contracts.
• Monitoring success of networks requires balance between process/compliance measures and value/outcome measures; it is essential to track relentlessly patient experience, financial performance and health outcomes.

Presentations are available at <www.whcnetworks.com>