Over three million referrals are made each year for patient care in Victorian hospitals. Eighty per cent of these referrals originate in general practice.
The South East Metro Health Services Partnership (SEMHSP*) commissioned our team to inform a regional approach that improves referral processes between primary care and hospital outpatient clinics.
Interviews with GPs and hospital clinicians, administrators, and leadership figures revealed a fragile and overstretched system that was complex and often frustrating to both GPs and hospital workers. Each group saw the system characterized by a lack of transparency, inefficiency and multiple challenges to access. Workarounds were common and added further load to the system.
The team recommendations comprised a range of evidence-based solutions, each of which needed to be based on a key component so far lacking in attempts to ease the system – appropriate and meaningful codesign with the users of the system, including hospital workers, primary care clinicians, and the community
of south-east Melbourne.
The SEMHSP is using the work as a foundation in a collaborative initiative to build a better system for all.
Key Department of General Practice staff involved in this project include:
For more information on the INTEGRATE project contact grant.russell@monash.edu
*SEMHSP is a collaboration between Monash Partners, Primary Care and health services in Melbourne’s South East.
