General Practice/Primary Care Agencies Systems Integration: A patient-centred approach

Abstract

The Primary Care Partnership ? General Practice /Primary Care Agencies Integration Framework is the result a body of work undertaken by the Central Victorian Health Alliance, designed to create effective collaborative working relationships between general practice and other sections of the primary care sector. The body of work included collaborative planning and joint projects designed to develop working relationships and information sharing. Underpinning this work was the premise that the goal of each project or task is to improve consumer health outcomes. In the absence of an existing working framework to guide this work we developed a simple concrete tool grounded in practice. Key aspects of the Framework include: recognition that for all health professionals the shared goal is the improvement of patient/consumer health outcomes; a focus on general practice and general practice systems, not on general practitioners alone; and a focus on the development and implementation of systems that support general practice and primary care agencies? service alignment interactions as well as foster interpersonal relationships.