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• Indigenous Chronic
  Disease Package
• Tackling Chronic Disease
  Risk Factors
  • National action to reduce Indigenous smoking rate
  • Helping Indigenous Australians to reduce their risk of chronic disease
  • Local Indigenous community campaigns to promote better health
• Improving Chronic Disease
  Management and Follow up
  • Subsidising PBS medicine co-payments
  • Higher utilisation costs for MBS and PBS
  • Supporting primary care providers to coordinate chronic disease management
  • Improving Indigenous participation in health care through chronic disease self management
  • Increasing specialist and allied health follow up care
  • Monitoring and evaluation
• Workforce Expansion,
  Training and Support
  • Workforce education and training
  • Expanding the outreach and service capacity of Indigenous health services
  • Engaging Medicare Locals to improve Indigenous Access to mainstream primary care
  • Attracting more people to work in Indigenous Health
  • Clinical practice and decision support

Clinical practice and decision support

What the Australian Government is doing

The Australian Government will develop a comprehensive primary health care resource for use by health care professionals in the prevention and primary care management of key chronic diseases for Indigenous Australians.

It will also ensure that mainstream chronic disease guidelines are amended to include information specific to Indigenous Australians.

The evidence-base

• Existing mainstream guidelines for the management of chronic disease do not adequately address burden of disease and health management needs specific to Indigenous Australians.
• The mainstream guidelines also do not outline culturally sensitive care for Indigenous Australians.
• Good quality guidelines can lead to improved patient care and clinical governance¹.
• Mainstream GPs often see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-specific guidelines as aimed at Indigenous health services and not relevant to them.

How this will work

• The resource will collate and present in a single resource existing tools, guides and other information that promote best practice in the prevention, identification and primary care management of chronic disease in Indigenous Australians. It will cover the key chronic diseases contributing to the burden of disease including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases (asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), and cancer (lung, breast and colorectal cancer).
• The resource will be aimed at workers in mainstream and Indigenous health sectors including GPs, nurses and Aboriginal Health Workers, and will consider urban, rural and remote settings.
• The primary health care resource will be developed in conjunction with experts, end users and consumers.

How this will help Indigenous Australians

For Indigenous Australians the resource aims to:

• improve the diagnosis and management of people with chronic disease in a timely and culturally appropriate manner;
• reduce acute presentation and provide better continuity of care; and
• contribute to improvements in health outcomes.

For health service providers the resource will:

• provide easily accessible, relevant and culturally appropriate information for the prevention, detection and management of chronic disease in Indigenous Australians;
• support and improve the use of best practice in the management of chronic disease for Indigenous Australians; and
• contribute to improvements in health outcomes against key indicators.

1 Thomas L, Cullum N, McColl E, Rousseau N, Soutter J, Steen N. Guidelines in professions allied to medicine. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 1999, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD000349. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000349.

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Page currency, Latest update: 24 March, 2010

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