“NACCHO will use the Baseline Profile to demonstrate the extent, experience and value of the ACCHO Sector to policy makers in government and those developing new programmes and budgets.

NACCHO is developing Baseline Profiles for its Member Services in 300 locations coordinated by 140 NACCHO Member Services as a first step in getting health and related data back in the hands of the Member Service ACCHOs and their communities.”

ACCHOs are a critical component of Australia’s primary health care system; the Baseline Profiles and Member Service’s localised profiles will re-enforce this fact “

Matthew Cooke Chair NACCHO

NACCHO delivers Map-Based Decision Support Services – Our Data in Our Hands for more info

NACCHO Baseline Profiles – putting data to work is from NACCHO Aboriginal Health Newspaper Page 10 April edition : Download 24 pages here

In these times of changing Federal policies, cut backs in areas of funding and overall fiscal constraints, ACCHOs are faced with providing broad ranging evidence of their performance to justify existing budgets and staffing levels, as well as justifying applications for new funding for the expansion of services into identified areas of need.

Challenges are also arising as an increasing number of programmes are being funnelled through the newly formed Primary Health Networks.

A new approach for determining funding allocations being used by the government and PHNs is referred to as “market testing”. This approach will potentially require ACCHOs to compete with state and territory health departments, other NGOs and for-profit practices and corporations for the provision of basic services and for the delivery of new programmes.

Mapping the service delivery footprint of ACCHOs service areas is important to demonstrate their role and significance as unique providers of comprehensive primary health care in over 300 locations coordinated by 140 NACCHO Member Services. ACCHOs are working with many of the new PHNs to build an understanding of the actual range of services provided to the population in their communities and the geographic extent of their service delivery. PHNs are required by the Department of Health to develop Health Needs Assessments and associated planning.

The ACCHO Sector has over 320,000 clients with over 3.7million client contacts delivered in 2013-2014. In comparison, the number of Emergency Department presentations in public hospital emergency departments in all states and territories was 7,195,903 (2013-2014) and RFDS undertook 292,523 client (patient) contacts in the same period.

NACCHOs Baseline Profiles, based on publicly available data, are being created for each Member Service. The profiles form a template to enable Member Services to add data from their own information systems. These localised templates will then be available for use in reports for Service planning and to provide evidence of performance, as well as for communications with community, funding bodies and policy makers.  A critical aspect of planning is “access to services”, for both existing services and for identifying areas where there is no access i.e. gaps.

The Baseline Profiles are using drive times (the time it takes to drive to an ACCHO) as a way of determining accessibility to health services, building on the work of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) and the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council (QAIHC).

SEE Koori Mail for 2 and 3 below :The graphic shows example panels from the Baseline Profile for the Geraldton Regional Aboriginal Medical Service in the electorate of Durack and Country WA PHN.