As the dust began to settle on COVID-19, we continued to focus on our strategic priorities and vision of a more connected primary health care system for WA. Central to this is health equity and improving access to primary health care services across WA’s culturally and geographically varied communities.
We have seen much progress on health system innovation and improvement, including the establishment of two general practice based Medicare Urgent Care Clinics and two endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics, the establishment of a network of Head to Health services in WA, delivered digitally, via telephone and face-to-face, and grants provided to general practices for a range of innovation, training and equipment purchases to improve patient access.
Our ongoing commitment to inclusion and diversity was further strengthened this year with the launch of our Aboriginal Cultural Competency and Capability Framework 2023-2025, LGBTIQA+ Equity and Inclusion Framework 2023-2025, Aboriginal Health Strategy and the Transgender Health and Gender Diversity HealthPathway.
Our organisation’s representation on the Strengthening Medicare Taskforce was purposeful and we have already seen initiatives flowing through to benefit patients through improved access, greater affordability and better management of chronic conditions in primary care.
We continued to support general practice to deliver the highest quality patient care. The GP Advisory Panel, a joint initiative between WA Primary Health Alliance (WAPHA), Rural Health West and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners WA, has strengthened the influence of general practice in the planning, design and policy setting for primary health care. We will focus further strengthening the relationship between general practice and our commissioned primary health care services over the coming year.
As an organisation, we publicly supported an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, encouraging our staff and others to become part of the national conversation so they could make well-informed decisions.
Digital transformation has been, and continues to be, a key area of focus for us. We continued to drive digital health initiatives such as Primary Health Insights and Primary Sense and support continuous improvement of our service providers through our Commissioned Services Reporting Portal and Performance Management Framework. The development of our Digital Health Strategy is already underway and will clearly articulate our vision for digital health into the future.
This year we refreshed our approach to stakeholder engagement and partnerships to make sure they are more flexible, purposeful and to encourage more meaningful input. The voices of all our stakeholders – communities, consumers, families, carers, health professionals and service providers – are critical to shaping our work to address inequity, identify gaps and invest in accessible, quality local care.
Our work this year has been supported by our extensive network of dedicated stakeholders, all working towards improving primary health care in WA. We are proud of our achievements as we strive for a more integrated health system, and we are excited to see what we can accomplish together over the coming year.