The changing attitudes of health professionals and consumers towards a coordinated care trial - SA HealthPlus

Abstract

The national coordinated care trials have been a vehicle for health reform in Australia, driven by escalating healthcare costs and projections of an ageing population. The first round of trials conducted between 1997 and 1999 set thetrials a challenge to reduce financial and system barriers to enable health professionals in all sectors and consumers todevelop service delivery models which would give better outcomes for patients within existing resources. As part of achange management strategy, the developers of the SA HealthPlus trial assessed the attitudes of health professionalsand consumers involved in designing the projects which made up the larger trial, prior to trial development and twelvemonths later. This paper reports on the results of the survey and how initial enthusiasm gave way to appropriateanxiety as the complexities of creating a new system of care from reactive to prospective patient centred care planning,became a reality. The survey enabled trial developers to show evidence of acceptability for the new model of care andidentify areas of concern and appropriate strategies for the project teams. This type of survey and the issues identifiedmay be of benefit to the second round coordinated care trials and health regions aiming to initiate coordinated careprograms.