Primary Health Care
The role of primary health care in preventing chronic disease
The role of primary health care in preventing the onset of chronic disease, with a particular focus on the lifestyle risk factors of obesity, tobacco and alcohol.
Mark Harris Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity, UNSW January 2008 Abstract
The potential impact of primary health care in assessing and managing smoking, hazardous drinking, poor diet and physical inactivity has been demonstrated among patients who are at higher risk. Effective interventions based around the 5As approach include the assessment of risk and readiness to change, brief motivational interventions and referral of suitable patients for more intensive interventions. Health checks have been demonstrated to improve the frequency of preventive care and support for behaviour change. However their impact on health outcomes is uncertain. Expansion of the current complexity of different Medicare items is undesirable. Health checks should focus on specific evidence based preventive actions and involve the use standardized resources such as Lifescripts and integrated health risk assessment tools. Other performance based incentives may be useful in targeting the needs of specific groups and encouraging primary health care to provide more outreach and culturally appropriate preventive care for disadvantaged groups. General practice referral of patients needing more intensive lifestyle interventions is infrequent due to a number of factors including cost and availability of providers and services and the integration between these services and primary health care. A major role of primary health care organisations is to coordinate and broker a network of referral services to support behaviour change based on standards and quality assurance. Other key roles of primary care include the support of practices to monitor and improve their performance in providing preventive care. Structural reform of primary health care may provide
The role of primary health care in preventing the onset of chronic disease, with a particular focus on the lifestyle risk factors of obesity, tobacco and alcohol.
Mark Harris Centre for Primary Health Care and Equity, UNSW January 2008 Abstract
The potential impact of primary health care in assessing and managing smoking, hazardous drinking, poor diet and physical inactivity has been demonstrated among patients who are at higher risk. Effective interventions based around the 5As approach include the assessment of risk and readiness to change, brief motivational interventions and referral of suitable patients for more intensive interventions. Health checks have been demonstrated to improve the frequency of preventive care and support for behaviour change. However their impact on health outcomes is uncertain. Expansion of the current complexity of different Medicare items is undesirable. Health checks should focus on specific evidence based preventive actions and involve the use standardized resources such as Lifescripts and integrated health risk assessment tools. Other performance based incentives may be useful in targeting the needs of specific groups and encouraging primary health care to provide more outreach and culturally appropriate preventive care for disadvantaged groups. General practice referral of patients needing more intensive lifestyle interventions is infrequent due to a number of factors including cost and availability of providers and services and the integration between these services and primary health care. A major role of primary health care organisations is to coordinate and broker a network of referral services to support behaviour change based on standards and quality assurance. Other key roles of primary care include the support of practices to monitor and improve their performance in providing preventive care. Structural reform of primary health care may provide