Capacity building initiatives within the Divisions of General Practice setting in Victoria, Australia.

Abstract

The General Practice Education, Support and Community Linkages Program (the Program) supported uptake of the Enhanced Primary Care (EPC) Medicare Benefits Schedule items. A goal underpinning the Program was to build the capacity of Divisions of General Practice to support GPs' EPC item usage. Capacity building was operationalised as: workforce development, organisational development, and resource allocation. This paper reports on the extent to which the Program built the Divisions' capacity to support GPs' EPC item usage. Telephone interviews were conducted with participating Division Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), EPC Coordinators and GP Trainers. Division CEOs, EPC Coordinators and GP trainers corroborated that the Program contributed to Divisions' capacity to support GPs' EPC item usage. Responses reflected interviewees' respective roles and position in Divisions. Given CEOs' strategic roles, they were more positive about the Program, EPC Coordinators and GP Trainers were less positive, given their pragmatic roles. It appeared that respondents had not explicitly considered the Program as a capacity building exercise. We infer that they may have been too close to implementation to see the Program's overarching policy and strategy. The evaluation highlighted the importance of implementing and evaluating capacity building initiatives explicitly using capacity building frameworks. To assist program sustainability, future schemes in the general practice setting would benefit from an explicit reference to capacity building in their stated objectives.