HealthPathways South Western Sydney continues to grow, providing our region’s GPs with even greater access to even more locally relevant, online information during consultations.
The quick and simple-to-use online clinical decision tool is designed to support GPs, practice nurses, and hospital and primary care clinicians at the point of care.
It includes information on:
- management and treatment options for clinical conditions
- educational resources for patients
- referral information for local services and specialists
As of 30 June 2022, there were currently 652 localised pathways with a further 123 in development. In the last financial year, HealthPathways localised 39 new pathways and completed 74 reviews and 229 partial updates.
Recent highlights include:
- Reviewing the contraception and sterilisation suite of pathways as lead region pathways, working closely with Dr Deborah Bateson
- Localising the range of women’s health gynaecology pages such as polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis and postmenopausal bleeding
- Hosting SafeScript NSW pathways on-site to assist in the rollout of SafeScript in South Western Sydney
- Adding all South Western Sydney Local Health District Outpatient Clinics to request pages on the site
HealthPathways is a joint SWSPHN and South Western Sydney Local Health District project.
Its content is developed collaboratively by GPs, hospital clinicians and a wide range of other health professionals. Each pathway is evidence-informed and designed to reflect actual local clinical practice.
Dr Jacqueline Krantz from Fairfield Central Medical Centre has been one of the HealthPathways Clinical Editors for the past two years.
She says HealthPathways South Western Sydney localises clinical guidelines to give GPs access to information specific to the area they are working in. It is useful for GPs needing guidance when organising, for example, psychology consultations for children or antenatal care at hospitals.
“HealthPathways provides access to a variety of resources and up-to-date guidelines which GPs can refer to during consultations.”
Dr Saba Alessawy’s practice, Myheath Brigadoon, is among the general practices in South Western Sydney to regularly use HealthPathways. It features among the top 10 users in the region, with about 1,720 page views over the past two years.
Dr Alessawy recommended GPs and other healthcare providers use HealthPathways, saying it is easy-to-use and rich with useful information.
She said GPs at her practice referred to HealthPathways both during and after consultations.
“In our practice we focus on education,” she said. “We train GP registrars, with a new registrar starting every six months, and we also regularly train medical students. We encourage all the trainees to use HealthPathways.”
Dr Alessawy said Myhealth Brigadoon saw a wide range of patients from different backgrounds, and HealthPathways was also useful tool for supporting GPs during those consultations.