You can take your hat off

Abstract

As an alliance of Western Melbourne health and wellbeing providers with the aim of combining systems redesign with health equity approaches, we’re interested in examining the role of partnership leaders. HealthWest builds on the Primary Care Partnership (Department of Human Services 2008) platform to broaden out both the scope and influence of the partnership. The HealthWest agenda now incorporates a much stronger advocacy and planning role through regular strategic forums. Members have also self funded the development of a business case for significant service system redesign that incorporates social influences on health. Formal members include community health services, local governments, hospitals, GP divisions, the local indigenous health service, psych disability support services, community nursing services, carers and ethno specific services working closely with Community and Neighbourhood Renewal, a range of refugee settlement services, government departments and community members. An important element of the HealthWest Partnership history is theWestBay-led Hospital Admission Risk Program diabetes project, which utilised the Chronic Care Model. Based on the ideas of American, Ed. Wagner (1998), the Chronic Care Model categorises, identifies and prioritises improvements and then systematically implements them using a team approach. It has the dual aims of creating an ‘active informed patient’ as well as a ‘proactive service team’. This framework has also been used to inform work with refugee and newly arrived services. Some examples of Chronic Care Model elements in practice: