| Therese Greenlees, Many of you are probably aware that practice liaison has undergone a dramatic change over the past few months, which includes expanding the number of team members and the hours allocated to the project to 80 hours staffing a week. With these improvements, the team will be more available than ever to provide over the telephone or in-house training and support.
Background
The practice liaison project began in 2002, largely to assist practices with accreditation, practice incentive payments and the enhanced primary care item numbers, and all things related to medical software (with the support of our IMIT department).
The team came together as a response to the demands of the ever changing environment of general practice, yet with the recognition that GPs and practices are diverse in nature and require individually tailored assistance to help with their particular need.
The practice liaison team can:
- link you to other project officers in the division who have specialised knowledge in their individual areas;
- help practice nurses settle into their new job, or provide practical assistance to established nurses who want to expand their role into health assessments, the new GP Management Plans and Team Care Arrangements, or just want to set up systems to help ease their workload;
- teach you to make your medical software work harder for you by showing you how to clean up your clinical databases, use your recall and reminder systems, or produce templates that work the way you need them to. We can even help you calculate the income you could be earning if you used the incentive payments.
Our aim is to provide a flexible response to practice requests, with a focus on practical assistance and supportive resources to help in all matters clinical and administrative. If we can’t help you or we don’t have a resource you need, we’ll either find someone who can help or point you in the right direction. If you need a resource to help you meet the RACGP 3rd Edition accreditation standards for example, call us.
Future directions
Perhaps there is a service we are not providing that you would like us to? We’re more than happy to consider any suggestions and do what we can to make it happen.
In the New Year, we plan to create an email list server and expand the practice nurse monthly newsletter, The In Practice Times, to include practice managers and staff, so we can keep them abreast of what is new and what workshops are available.
Early next year Medical Director training for practice staff, practice nurses and GPs will begin after an overwhelming response from our faxed needs assessment.
If you have any further questions please contact one of your practice liaison officers on 6622 4453.
Therese Greenlees is one of the division’s practice liaison officers.
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