Scroll Down
The ACT and SNSW HealthPathways Program is a unique cross-border partnership involving CHN, ACT Health, Southern NSW Local Health District and COORDINARE (South-Eastern NSW PHN).
There are a total of 623 pathways live on the ACT & SNSW HealthPathways site. Over the last year, 29 pathways were localised and 118 pathways were reviewed. There were more than 6,000 returning users and over 200,000 pageviews. This is a 5% increase in users and a 14% increase in pageviews in comparison to the previous year. The site also reported its highest number of pageviews in a month with over 22,000 pageviews recorded in March 2022.
The ACT & SNSW HealthPathways program has continued to be responsive and relevant to local community needs through the provision of clinical assessment, management, referral and resource information.
The ACT & SNSW HealthPathways program has supported CHN’s strategic outcomes relating to better health, better care and better supported workforce through program activities and pathway development and review. The program has continued to partner with local health and community services to update pathways and reflect the priority needs identified in the CHN needs assessment. This includes a strong focus on supporting health professionals to provide the best possible care to people at risk of poorer health outcomes and to improve the navigation of Canberrans through the health system.
In the digital health space, the ACT & SNSW HealthPathways team has been supporting the implementation of the HealthLink SmartForms for referral to Canberra Hospital and Health Services outpatient services. As part of this integration, HealthPathways provided direct links to relevant pathways to be embedded within the SmartForms. These links were provided for instances when referrers required further information on service criteria and pre-referral instructions. Users viewed multiple pathways with 195 users accessing HealthPathways from the HealthLink SmartForms and viewing 2,731 pages.
a) Program Evaluation
To assess the utility and effectiveness of HealthPathways in responding to the 2019/20 bushfires and the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the program finalised a joint evaluation report with the Illawarra Shoalhaven HealthPathways program (Evaluation of HealthPathways Response to the Bushfire and COVID-19 Pandemic in ACT & Southern NSW and Illawarra Shoalhaven regions).
Testimonials
“I’m the pandemic leader in my practice. I used HealthPathways to check that we weren’t missing anything as we wrote the protocols and guidelines for our practice.”
We were looking at the telehealth pathway. I know we looked at it a lot just to make sure that we could still keep our patients safe during that time.”
b) Keeping COVID-19 Pathways up-to-date
As of June 2022, there were 14 clinical, referral and resource pathways on the ACT & SNSW HealthPathways site relating to COVID-19. These COVID-19 pathways cover Assessment and Management, Post COVID-19 Conditions, Referral, Vaccinations, Practice Management and Technology and Impact on Clinical Care and Local Services.
Over the last year, these pathways have required significant updates in line with the rapid changes in the COVID-19 environment. The beginning of 2022 saw significant changes to the model of care and larger case numbers within the community, resulting in an increasing role for primary health care staff in supporting patients who were self-managing, as well as working alongside local COVID-19 Care@Home teams in active case management.
To ensure the pathways were kept up-to-date and to enable consistency across the HealthPathways platform, the ACT & SNSW HealthPathways program remained active members of the regional pathway sharing collaboration with NSW HealthPathways teams. Over the last year, the focus of this regional Clinical Working Group has been improving the useability of the COVID-19 pathway suite at the point of care. This has involved reducing the overall number of pathways, merging pathways and increasing the number of links to relevant external resources.
The COVID-19 pathways received high engagement from ACT & SNSW HealthPathways users with 6,317 pageviews of just the COVID-19 Active Case Management and COVID-19 Referrals pathways. Jan-June 2022 also saw a large increase in pageviews of the Post COVID-19 Conditions pathway in comparison to the previous six months, reflecting the growing need for information in this area. HealthPathways users were also accessing information relating to local antiviral dispensing services as well as referral instructions to engage with the COVID-19 Care@Home team.
