RACGP says the new consortium will provide needed support in an underfunded sector of primary care.
A new primary care research consortium will improve patient care and was a “positive step forward”, says the RACGP.
The National Multidisciplinary Primary Care Research, Policy and Advocacy Consortium, was announced in February by the federal minister for health Mark Butler and backed by $5 million from the Medical Research Future Fund.
The RACGP is one member of the consortium which involves 100 primary care researchers from 20 universities.
The funding for primary care research has been underfunded, receiving less than 2% of national medical research funding, despite general practice being Australia’s most accessed sector of the health system, seeing over 22 million patients each year.
“We need to fix this,” said RACGP president Dr Michael Wright.
“Health research should happen where most people access healthcare – and that’s in general practice.
“This new consortium is an important and exciting opportunity to design, test and innovate models of care to better meet the needs of patients across Australia, and I’m proud the RACGP is a member.”
Dr Wright said one of the priorities of the consortium was to “generate knowledge about models of multidisciplinary care”, to assist with issues such as ageing and chronic illness that required diverse teams for most effective treatment.
According to the RACGP Health of the Nation survey, 61% of respondents said a lack of government funding and incentives was preventing further innovation in the field.
The number one reason for innovation stalling was a lack of time, that was linked to poor funding, according to the survey.
Related
The research consortium is firmly aimed at helping to alleviate barriers preventing GPs from tackling innovation.
“Health research should be carried out where most Australians access care in general practice,” said Dr Wright.
“And we know that general practice research is underfunded and underrepresented compared to other health research.”
Similar networks have been established in the UK and Canada, with Canada especially showing the positive impact of well-established primary care research initiatives.
“[Those networks] gather learnings from local GPs and practices and local communities, and then use that information to help inform policy,” Dr Wright told TMR.
“We really need to inform how that type of model of care is designed in Australia and use that knowledge so that we improve patient care, and that we focus on research feeding into policy and advocacy so that it’s well designed.”
Dr Wright said the intent was not to copy the Canadian system but to follow its lead in the establishment of primary care research, respective of patient usage.
“It’s really important that we have long-term funding for national general practice research and a practice-based research network in Australia, which will help us to identify issues, gain more evidence and share that knowledge so that we can improve the quality of care and health outcomes, as well as improving that academic GP workforce,” he said.
