The HealthPathways Melbourne team celebrated 700 pathways in August, with the go-live of their statewide vascular pages and steady growth in local engagement.

The team worked hard to embed HealthPathways into broader programme work and commissioning activities in their respective Primary Health Networks, Eastern Melbourne (EM PHN) and North Western Melbourne (NWM PHN).

“As a result of this work, we’ve gone from knocking on doors to ask people to collaborate with us, to now managing all the interest we get from stakeholders who want to be involved,” says Richard Penberthy, Lead - HealthPathways Melbourne.

A key factor in this increasing engagement has been the growing number of medical organisations accessing HealthPathways Melbourne via IP address authentication key.

“General practitioners and their teams appreciate the ease and convenience of automatic access,” says Richard.

“It has removed the barrier for users of remembering and re-entering a username and password each time they access HealthPathways. Medical practitioners who have set HealthPathways Melbourne to open at start-up now have their essential tools - such as clinical software, HealthPathways, and the RACGP Red Book - up and running when they begin their day,” he says.

“There has been a lot of internal engagement work at both EM PHN and NWM PHN to achieve the success we’ve had so far – educating internal teams on what HealthPathways Melbourne is, and how it links to better patient outcomes. Our general practice-facing teams have been a big part of this achievement.”

Other priorities for the HealthPathways Melbourne team for the next few months include continuing collaboration on Victorian statewide project work through the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), with a focus on specialist clinic reform and optimal care pathways.

Celebrating a challenging journey

The four years spent developing their HealthPathways programme so far has been a challenging and rewarding journey, acknowledges Richard.

Key achievements have included managing their way through the transition from Medicare Local to Primary Health Networks, the consolidation of two HealthPathways websites into one, and successfully adapting to the HealthPathways Style Guide.

The HealthPathways Melbourne programme is jointly run by two PHNs. To make the most of the festive feeling, each held a small celebration to mark the 700 pathways milestone. At an upcoming clinical editors’ meeting, a combined celebration will highlight not only the key achievements of the past 12 months, but also those since the programme started.

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. These resources have been provided by members of the HealthPathways Community.