Patient enrolment in Australian primary health care

Patient enrolment in general practice is an important consideration for health systems, administrators, service providers and consumers across the world. This RESEARCH ROUNDup reviews patient enrolment in the Australian context, including both strengths and weaknesses of the approach, the policy context and examples of programs currently being implemented nationally

Communication between health professionals across sectors

Bringing disparate activities and services into a coherent system requires well-resourced communication. The World Health Organization defines health services integration as: bringing together common functions within and between organisations to solve common problems, developing commitment to a shared vision and goals and using common technologies and resources to achieve these goals. This RESEARCH ROUNDup explores strategies that enable interactive, timely, two-way exchange of pertinent clinical information between care providers across primary, acute and specialist settings

Blended funding models in primary health care

This RESEARCH ROUNDup explores the application of blended funding models in primary health care. It presents a snapshot of examples and evaluations of effects and consequences of implementing blended funding models in Australia, New Zealand and Canada and the impact of these approaches on organisations, care delivery for chronic conditions and patient experience

Complementary medicine use in chronic disease: What is the evidence?

The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is commonplace in people managing chronic disease. This RESEARCH ROUNDup highlights evidence for the medication-based CAM used to address chronic conditions considered national priority areas in Australia. Nevertheless, more high quality evidence on prevalence of use, concurrent use of other medications and profiles of CAM users particularly for specific conditions is required for consumers, clinicians (both CAM and non-CAM), regulators, educators, researchers, policy-makers and funders

Primary health care and preventive care

Preventive care refers to interventions which aim to prevent progression of a condition. They may be applied at individual or population levels and at various stages of disease development. For the primary health care (PHC) sector, preventive care is a priority and a challenge. This RESEARCH ROUNDup reviews preventive care in the PHC setting including consideration of time, resources and strategies in an Australian context

Primary health care funding models

The way primary health care (PHC) services are funded ultimately impacts on the quality, access and coordination of health service delivery. Financial mechanisms have long been used to influence provider behaviour, for example to increase productivity, control costs and improve efficiency.1 Health system administrators are charged with the task of meeting growing demand for services with finite resources, emphasising quality and placing a financial value on it. This RESEARCH ROUNDup examines the funding models that impact on PHC service delivery

The Role of the Primary Health Care Research & Information Service (PHCRIS)

PHCRIS Research Fellow, Dr Jodie Oliver-Baxter, presented an online session on The Role of the Primary Health Care Research & Information Service (PHCRIS) during Research Week 2013 - a GPET initiative with plenary sessions and workshops run online between 31 May and 6 June 201

Knowledge Exchange, Primary Health Care and Nursing: The role of the Primary Health Care Research & Information Service

This poster explores how PHCRIS can support nurses in primary health care (PHC) through knowledge exchange with policy, practice, research and consumer stakeholders

Integrated care: What policies support and influence integration in health care in Australia?

Without integration, all aspects of care can suffer. Patients can get lost in the system, needed services fail to be delivered or are delayed or duplicated, the quality of the care experience declines, and the potential for cost-effectiveness diminishes (Kodner and Spreeuwenberg, 2002). Integrated health care has been a focus of national health reform in Australia and internationally. In Australia, this has culminated in the National Health Reform Agreement (NHR Agreement; August 2011) to deliver reforms to the organisation, funding and delivery of health and aged care. Over successive health reform agreements since the National Healthcare Agreement of 2008, there has been a concerted effort to promote integration at the macro level between governments. The NHR Agreement sets out the shared intention of Commonwealth, State and Territory governments to work in partnership to improve health outcomes for Australians and ensure the sustainability of the Australian health system. More recently, the Commonwealth has worked closely with states and territories and primary health care (PHC) stakeholders to develop a National Primary Health Care Strategic Framework (Standing Council on Health, 2013)

Integrated care: What policies support and influence integration in health care across New Zealand, England, Canada and the United States?

One of the key challenges for health systems worldwide is the substantial cost of fragmented care, not only financially, but also in terms of patient and population health. In light of this, integrated health care has been a key element of health reforms internationally. Despite substantial diversity in health systems across developed countries, there is consensus that current health care expenditure is unsustainable, particularly in the context of ageing populations with increasing prevalence of chronic disease and multi-morbidities. The universal challenge is to improve the quality and safety of health care and, concomitantly, to curb the rising costs of health care delivery. Evidence indicates that health systems with strong integrated primary health care (PHC) at their core are both effective and efficient at delivering appropriate services where they are needed most. Although Australia is comparable to New Zealand (NZ), England, Canada, and the United States (US) in terms of expenditure and coverage of PHC, recent evidence suggests that there is room for improvement in Australia on indicators of integration including access, cost, coordination, information sharing and chronic disease management, which may reflect the fact that, for the most part, these countries have been working at ways to achieve integrated health services for longer than Australia