Clinical pathways involving general practice - a new approach to integrated health care?

Abstract

The Mater Mothers' Hospital, South Brisbane recently identified a number of difficulties with thematernity share-care program it runs with 1100 local GPs. This paper describes an integrationapproach developed at the Mater which has addressed these problems via the use of clinicalmanagement guidelines across the whole episode of care, the provision of a patient held record /pathway as a clinical practice prompt, clear communication and information management protocolsbetween hospital and general practice, and the provision of continuing medical education for share-carepractitioners.