Clinical Pathways: The Care Link Between Primary Health Services

Abstract

The continually changing health environment requires service providers to review constantly the way services are provided. It is important that effective and sustainable service partnerships are developed to ensure that the primary health needs of Victorians are met. The aim of these partnerships is to provide a coordinated approach to health care and achieve the best health outcomes. Services will need to develop innovative processes and systems to ensure that coordinated care is achieved in a way that ensures Victorians receive the best primary health care. Clinical pathways are an innovative process that provides a framework around which coordinated care can be managed. Effective management is achieved by organising and integrating all levels of health care delivered by different providers from a number of different disciplines. They are management plans, which identify desired client outcomes and provide the sequence of events necessary to achieve these outcomes. Clinical pathways provide a framework for clinicians to guide them in the provision of care through the identification of interventions and measurable outcomes along a timeline. Within the changing health environment, service providers must develop systems at all levels that will enable the concept of integrated and coordinated care to be operationalised. At the level of care provision to individual clients, clinical pathways are a system that is worthy of consideration. They provide a coordinated care approach, a documentation system, a teaching tool, and a resource for quality management and research. They create a client-focused link between service providers, which is otherwise difficult to achieve. Coordinated and integrated care thus becomes a lived reality for the clinician and for the client.