We adopted a flexible and sustainable approach to supporting the sector. We helped ensure general practices and their workforce were adequately equipped, informed and resourced to safely provide patient care.

 

With support from the SEMPHN Board and Executive Leadership Team, SEMPHN staff commenced working from home arrangements on 16 March 2020. Like many businesses during this time, we became ‘master pivoters’ in our support for primary care and the COVID-19 response. This also solidified our position as a critical regional implementer of Federal and State Government Health initiatives.

These initiatives included:

• Establishment of four GP-led Respiratory Clinics in our region
• Prioritisation of the 2020 flu vaccine for residential aged care facility workers
• Distribution and management of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to general practices, Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations (ACCHOs), community pharmacies, allied health and nurse practitioner-led clinics.

 

SEMPHN continues to play a significant role as a curator of information from the Commonwealth and Victorian Government to the primary health sector.

COVID-19 was no exception. In fact, with information changing daily, SEMPHN introduced a variety of new communications to keep our stakeholders well informed.

This included:

• Weekly lunchtime COVID-19 webinars facilitated by our CEO, for general practice staff
• Monthly webinars with our Alcohol and Other Drug, Mental Health and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander service providers, to provide relevant information and key touchpoints for the region
• Establishment of online forums for these providers, to help them connect and support each other
• COVID-19 daily Electronic Direct Mail updates to our subscribers
• Daily COVID-19 text messages to our health professional subscribers
• Dedicated new webpages specific to COVID-19 updates for health professionals and the community
• Delivery of education and training webinars and videos to support the business part of general practices
• Increased social media posts for health professionals and community including a weekly data snapshot of the region’s active and total COVID-19 cases.

Digital support in general practice

Our prior work in strategy and planning allowed us to support general practice to work remotely with HealthVitalIT and videocalls, understand their challenges, and help GPs integrate technology into their model of care.

 

Using webinars to engage practice managers and nurses

Practice network meetings continued to be delivered to practice managers and nurses every two months, switching to a webinar format to adapt to COVID-19. Meetings were shortened to a more manageable one hour (from two), and with new Zoom capacity of 500, many more people could attend. The option of watching a recording later, has also been appreciated.

“I thought it was great – questions answered – hope it was well attended.  Great knowledgeable presenters.” – Practice Manager

 

“Presentation excellent…you all did great job. Liked the interactive quiz.” – Practice Nurse

 

Early in the pandemic, we wanted to show our appreciation and thanks for everyone in primary health who were working tirelessly to continue caring for people in their community. We asked general practices, service providers, health workers and SEMPHN staff to give a ‘shout out’ to someone or a team who was going ‘above and beyond’ during COVID-19, which we then shared on social media.

 

We conducted 30 online interviews with GPs across the region to better understand how general practices were adapting during COVID-19 and the new measures they were taking to keep their staff and patients safe and well. This included everything from the value of using telehealth to the significant impacts of mental health. All interviews were captured in short videos and shared on SEMPHNs social media platforms. Thank you to all GPs who took the time to participate in these video interviews.

Watch Dr Nick Carr talk about using telehealth for patient consults during the pandemic

 

Watch Dr Nada Hassan as she talks about her experience as a GP during the pandemic

By reviewing primary health data, we learnt that patients were delaying GP appointments for health issues unrelated to COVID-19. Combined with the known significant impacts of isolation on people’s mental health, we initiated a campaign to target our community promoting clear and simple messages about chronic disease and mental health. These messages promoted the importance of reaching out to their GP for medical care and not to neglect any new health issues during the pandemic.

Here was our post with the highest engagement:

Our four-week campaign from 8 May – 7 June, with three different campaign ‘streams’, proved a successful and measurable means of communicating strong messages during times of uncertainty.