This case study focuses on the experience and learnings of a HealthPathways program in metropolitan Sydney during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reviews the team’s program management responses and looks at key factors that have facilitated the spread and scale of HealthPathways. The key factors for successful spread and scale are a coordinated response, the maturity of the HealthPathways program, having a single source of truth, high level governance, leadership, collaboration, flexible funding and an ability to make local changes where required.

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A case study highlighting the value and impact of HealthPathways during the COVID-19 response. The study finds that HealthPathways played an important role by providing front line clinicians with trusted, reliable, and up-to-date information during a time characterised by rapidly changing information and advice. Development of the COVID-19 pathways also required significant collaboration which resulted in strengthened relationships, trust and respect between government, local health systems, community health providers, and colleges.

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This evaluation has explored the value of the Murray HealthPathways program against its objectives and, in particular, to explore the value of the HealthPathways program in: informing, guiding and supporting health professional practice; improving the experience and outcomes of patients and carers; and enabling health system improvement. The evaluation has also sought to inform the potential future directions for Murray HealthPathways.

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A case study that describes the implementation of HealthPathways in the Australian state of Queensland. Queensland presents an interesting case because HealthPathways was implemented within a policy context of addressing equity of access to care, within the wider context of a state Outpatient Strategy and Clinical Prioritisation Criteria (CPC). HealthPathways has played an important role in delivering the CPC in Queensland across a number of diverse localities, achieving the support of front-line clinicians for a change that could, in other circumstances, have been confronting and controversial. This is an example of managing the consistency in health services, while allowing for local variation where appropriate.

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A case study using a pre-post study design was used to investigate the impact of HeathPathways. The study suggests that HealthPathways has likely reduced costs for diabetes patients in Mackay through a reduction in unnecessary referrals. Economic analysis indicated the diabetes pathways could potentially save the health system approximately $74,240 per year in avoidable referrals.

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The evaluation has provided insight into the use and value of HealthPathways across the 3D region and presented some considerations to support its ongoing delivery.

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A report from the Kings Fund report that provides an overview of the transformation process that the Canterbury Health System undertook. This is a follow up to the 2013 Kings Fund report.

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A journal article that provides an overview of HealthPathways, which includes discussion on the background, evolution, and development of the HealthPathways platform.

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A journal article that reviews HealthPathways in the Australian setting and reviews literature identifying that HealthPathways has the ability to improve GP/hospital relations, efficiency, and integration.

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Hunter & New England HealthPathways (H&NE HealthPathways) is an initiative to improve the management and referral of patients by General Practitioners (GP) and Hunter New England Local Health District (HNE) clinical specialists, and to facilitate the redesign of clinical processes to
achieve such an improvement. It seeks to achieve these outcomes through the collaborative development of web-based clinical pathways by primary and specialist care clinicians.

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A report from the Kings Fund that provides an overview of the transformation process that the Canterbury Health System undertook.

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A journal article that describes and identifies the outcomes from a skin cancer programme. and identifies the outcomes. The programme improved skin cancer management and resulted in a greater number of skin cancers being treated by the public health system, a reduction in waiting times for treatment, and fewer minor skin lesions being referred to secondary care. Development of the programme has improved working relationships between primary and secondary care clinicians.

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A journal article that demonstrated the value of explicit advice in a pancreatitis clinical pathway. The improvement led to improved compliance by 13% (65 to 78%) resulting in 54 fewer amylase tests taken over the six-month period. 

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A journal article that describes the results from an online survey to determine the perceptions of healthcare professionals in Canterbury on HealthPathways. They found that 90 to 95% of GP teams thought HealthPathways was easy to use and improved patient care. The majority of hospital clinicians (87%) considered the website had contributed to better patient management in primary care and had improved all stages of referral and follow-up of patients.

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A journal article that describes the development of a supportive education programme and availability of online information about tongue-tie for health professionals and consumers. The programme contributed to successful uptake of the new clinical pathway and a reduction in the frenotomy intervention rate from 11.3% in 2015 to 3.5% by mid-2017.

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A journal article that describes and identifies the outcomes from a project to improve radiology referral. This project led to a sustained improvement in primary care radiology referral quality and value in Canterbury. The service achieved sustained improvements in referral quality (referral acceptance rates increased from 78% to 88%, urgent referrals reduced from 59% to 22%) and value (plain film volumes reduced by 40%).

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