Minister for Indigenous Health visits GPpartners

29 April 2010

The Federal Minister for Indigenous Health, Warren Snowdon, yesterday visited GPpartners to discuss opportunities for General Practice and local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to work together on closing the 17 year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

Earlier this month, the Minister had announced the allocation of more than 80 Indigenous Health Project Officers to general practices across the nation, and was greeted on his arrival by the Division’s Chair, Dr Henry Bryan, and new Closing the Gap Project Coordinator, Nancy Collins.

Dr Bryan said Ms Collins’ appointment was timely and would ensure GPpartners continued to develop relationships with local health services that provide care to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

“Our GPs and staff already actively support a number of such services in our area including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Service at Northgate, the Strathpine GP Super Clinic, and the Indigenous Health Services Clinic at The Prince Charles Hospital.

“We’re also very supportive of the initiative shown by The Keperra Family Practice and Skin Cancer Clinic, which has begun to operate an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander specific health clinic on Tuesdays,” Dr Bryan said.

“We’re keen to see more Indigenous friendly general practices established, wherever we can identify a demand, and making that happen is part of Ms Collins’ role,” he said.

Nancy Collins said GPpartners is planning to introduce a cultural competency course for practices wishing to move toward an Indigenous friendly model.

“The idea is that we can train GPs and practice staff about engaging positively and productively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to create an environment in which they are more likely to identify themselves and therefore receive culturally appropriate care,” Ms Collins said.

“There are almost 7000 people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background living in the GPpartners divisional area across Brisbane’s north side, but a woefully low number of these identify themselves as such with their family GP.

“Consequently, they largely miss out on vaccinations and Medicare health checks that have been specifically designed around the particular health needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” she said.

GPpartners will also work on connecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Services to its shared electronic health record system, the Health Records eXchange (HRX).

The HRX allows the sharing of up-to-the-minute patient summaries between multidisciplinary healthcare professionals at the point of care.

The system is currently used primarily for patients enrolled in a GPpartners program specially designed to support GP patients with chronic and complex care needs who require care from multiple health care providers.

As Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have statistically higher than average rates of chronic disease, GPpartners is seeking expand its chronic disease management and HRX programs to extend care to this population group.

Photo: Federal Minister for Indigenous Health, Warren Snowdon; Ms Nancy Collins, GPpartners Closing the Gap Project Coordinator; Dr Henry Bryan, GPpartners Chair

Media contact: Simon Brooks, Ph 07 3630 7330