Population Health – How we Grow a Healthy Community
Introducing the Growlife Medical Population Health team...
Did you know we think about you and your health, even when you aren’t here? In this article we hope to offer you some behind-the-scenes insight into how we do this. We are proud of this work, having recently won a national award for patient-centred care. At Growlife we are lucky to support many fantastic GPs to do great work. We believe that a partnership between this personalised care, coupled with the use of data to prompt the care you need, creates a little bit of magic and a healthier you.
Why
We believe in improving health through connection. Our mission is to grow Australia’s healthiest populations. We think about the total health of the community around our practices by working with individuals, growing the strength of families, and actively contributing to a connected local community. Your relationship with your GP is foundational to the start of a healthy life. However, we also see that so many health issues faced by individuals have their origins outside the clinic walls, and can get lost amongst other priorities, so we felt there was more we could be doing!
Who
In 2021 we formed a Population Health team – a group of dedicated Growlife Medical staff working to improve the health of our community at a population level. This team is led by a pharmacist and dietitian, with guidance and support from a Clinical Advisory group of GPs, nurses and support staff. This team of passionate individuals is responsible for taking a ‘big picture’ view, to identify areas of health that need improvement within our community.
What
‘Population Health’ refers to “the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including distribution of such outcomes within the group.” 1 This means we take a bird's eye view of the health and well-being of our community, supporting your GP to alert you to health issues that might otherwise not be addressed. It also guides and focuses on the services we offer to complement your GP’s care.
Innovative technology allows us to identify important markers of health need; things like if you have been diagnosed with diabetes, are currently pregnant, have been prescribed a certain medication, or if you are eligible for a vaccine. This allows us to identify a health risk, prompt routine care that hasn’t occurred, or contact you to offer specific dedicated health information to meet your needs. It also allows us to compare how we are going compared to national data to identify priority areas within our community where we could improve.
This ‘thinking outside the box’ approach allows our Population Health team to ‘dream up’ and roll out quality improvement projects, including our recent cervical screening campaign, for which we won an award in patient-centered care. Within this campaign, we were able to improve the proportion of eligible patients with up-to-date screening at all of our practice locations. To put this in perspective, at our Highgate Hill clinic, the proportion of eligible patients increased from 36% to 44% during this project.
Other recent examples of this process include offering immunisations to eligible patient groups, providing information on upcoming education sessions, and offering home medication reviews in instances where medication misadventure is possible, including following discharge from hospital.
Where/When
The Growlife Population Health team meets fortnightly to discuss priorities, progress and outcomes in this space, and the Clinical Advisory Group meets quarterly to monitor progress and guide the next priorities.
From your end, you may have noticed more email communication from us lately! Email is a useful tool to enable us to provide you with specific information in an efficient way. It allows us to connect and keep in contact with you outside the practice walls 😊.
We hope to see you soon at Growlife Medical, as we continue our mission to grow Australia’s healthiest communities.
A note on privacy...
Your privacy is paramount. We never share your personal medical information with other providers, unless you ask us to. Similarly, your contact details, including email addresses, are never disclosed to third parties. For more details see our privacy policy.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447747/
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