With the release of their dermatology suite of pathways, HealthPathways South Western Sydney has now reached a significant milestone of 500 localised pathways.

The team has also celebrated another milestone of 50% localised content.

The South Western Sydney HealthPathways programme is jointly funded by South Western Sydney Primary Health Network and South Western Sydney Local Health District. Since its launch in 2015, more than 400 health professionals (including 59 general practitioners and their teams) have supported the programme, by being involved in workgroups and reviewing pathways.

“The key to growing support from our local health professionals was identifying key contacts within the clinical streams who could then link our HealthPathways team with the relevant personnel,” says HealthPathways Manager Ben Neville.

“Local health district staff have been instrumental in spreading the word,” he says.

The South Western Sydney HealthPathways programme has also expanded to provide online education content, a practice software repository, and details of local PHN programmes. In 2017, a companion site for consumers was launched, Health Resource Directory.org.au. Work commenced on translating HealthPathways content into patient factsheets - with more than 200 factsheets now available in multiple languages and formats.

“HealthPathways is now seen as one of the primary vehicles for the local health district to connect and engage with general practice within the region, also utilising the patient factsheets as a method of engaging with health consumers,” says Ben.

“For those health professionals who tried HealthPathways during its initial rollout and disengaged due to the lack of local content, this is a great opportunity to give it another try, as we continue to build the content and provide more details on local services and clinical guidance.”

The South Western Sydney HealthPathways team are now focusing on a project to map every public health service within the region and have all request pages localised.

Building local engagement

For tips and resources to help you build HealthPathways engagement in your area, see Getting General Practice Engaged with HealthPathways, or Engagement and Education for helpful resources provided by members of the HealthPathways Community.