This year SWSPHN celebrates 10 years of proudly building healthier communities by enhancing and connecting care to meet local needs.
On 1 July 2015, the Australian Government established 31 Primary Health Networks across Australia to reduce service fragmentation, and understand and address unmet local health service needs by working with a broad range of stakeholders within primary care and beyond.
Guided by our three core functions, also affectionately known as the ‘three Cs’, SWSPHN has been at the forefront of commissioning local services to address service gaps, at building the capacity of local general practices and health providers to enhance care, and in supporting and enabling the coordination and integration of care services.
During the past decade, PHNs have become experts at establishing and leveraging partnerships to achieve whole of system collaboration and to bring to fruition place-based approaches which truly address health inequities and improve health outcomes.
SWSPHN Acting CEO Amy Prince said the organisation’s strong alignment with our values, and dedication to our vision and mission, had ensured ongoing growth and success and better health for our community.
“Our vision of better health for South Western Sydney underpins all we do and all decisions we make are in service of achieving that vision and delivering on our mission,” she said.
“We have a deep understanding of our local community’s primary healthcare needs and we are proud of the services we have shaped and funded to meet those needs.
“This last financial year alone we have managed more than $70 million in funding to local providers, managing up to 139 agreements across mental health, aged care, Aboriginal health, Urgent Care, preventative health, chronic disease management and numerous integrated health initiatives.”
Ms Prince said little of the work of PHNs was accomplished in isolation, and partnerships in innovation and service delivery were often the backbone of success.
“Our strong track record in innovation has enhanced our integration and capacity building efforts,” she said.
“We are focused on interoperability solutions to link hospitals and GPs as well as the development of local medical neighbourhoods through focused care coordination. This is not done is isolation. We work closely with many partners including NGOs, primary care providers and the Local Health District.”
She said a unique characteristic of PHNs was the ability to adapt and implement truly local solutions and become change agents in a system which could be disconnected and slow to respond.
“PHNs are passionate about improving health outcomes and have become very effective change agents for major health reforms at a grassroots level,” Ms Prince said.
“We have worked collectively at state and national level on many initiatives in the past 10 years which continue to enhance primary healthcare service delivery and I think our agility and responsiveness at a local level was never more evident than during the COVID-19 pandemic when we were able to implement government initiatives such as the GP respiratory clinics and support rapid rollout of vaccinations through GPs in our local community.”