Townsville Practice Manager Cynthia Hawkings is deeply dedicated to improving patient care and transforming the lives of those living with a chronic condition.
This heartfelt commitment is why she and the team at Kirwan GP Clinic are actively participating in the Northern Queensland Primary Health Network's (NQPHN's) Proactive Chronic Conditions Management (ProCCM) Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) program.
With the upcoming government changes involving MyMedicare reform and chronic disease management item numbers, general practices from across North Queensland are taking part in the improvement program.
By participating in the program, Ms Hawkings wants to create meaningful improvements to ensure every patient receives the care they deserve.
"We are aiming to incorporate evidence-based approaches and collaborative strategies into our care model," Ms Hawkings said.
"This involvement allows us to stay current with quality improvement trends and integrate innovative approaches to better serve our patients.
"It also gives us the opportunity to collaborate with other healthcare providers and exchange best practices. This shared learning experience will help us adopt successful strategies and avoid common challenges."
The program aims to support the practice teams to understand the upcoming changes, review their practice data to identify patients eligible to register to MyMedicare, and help them to develop more streamlined processes to implement effective chronic disease management plans.
Ms Hawkings said Kirwan GP Clinic's primary goals were to improve patient outcomes through effective chronic condition management, streamline care processes, and boost patient engagement.
"The program will support us in reaching these goals by providing a structured framework for continuous improvement, facilitating data-driven decisions, and offering valuable insights for refining our care strategies," she said.
NQPHN Interim Chief Executive Officer Ben Tooth said the participating practices would benefit greatly from taking part in the continuous quality improvement program.
"Navigating reform can be challenging and our general practices are already under pressure," he said.
"Our Primary Care Engagement teams are committed to providing support to our practices and we are pleased to be able to engage providers like Healthily (GoShare) and APNA to ensure our practices have access to high-quality resources and training.
"Throughout the program, our teams will regularly touch base with participating practices to ensure they reach their key milestones and action the learnings from the workshops to ultimately improve the patient experience for chronic disease management."
By participating in the activities, practices will have access to a suite of programs and resources that will help contribute to a successful outcome.
These will include the highly successful MyMedicare GoShare Voice campaign, the INCA integrated care platform , digital health literacy course, and a community of practice facilitated by Australian Primary Healthcare Nurses Association (APNA).
The Proactive Chronic Conditions Management Continuous Quality Improvement program will run until June 2025, by which time participating practices should be able to position themselves as leaders of chronic disease management for the region.
