Message from our Chair

I am pleased to present the 2021-22 South Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network (SEMPHN) Annual Report.

It’s been a year of change and evolution for SEMPHN, and more broadly the health sector. Any of our achievements are the result of very hard work and resilience from our staff, in partnership with the primary health workforce. We know we can’t achieve our goals without collaboration.

During the year, Victoria experienced three lockdowns, placing additional stress on the community and across the south east’s 480 general practices, 2,000 general practitioners, nurses, support and other allied health staff. In the last year alone, our provider support team has made over 1,500 contacts, and our digital health team has helped general practice and allied health providers to improve access to telehealth; with the fourth highest uptake across Australia’s 31 PHNs.

With new waves and variants of COVID-19 in the community, we also supported the rapid ramping-up and down of community vaccination with our COVID team running 14 vaccination webinar sessions for our health care workers, along with supporting mental health services to manage the massive impact of more than two years of anxiety and isolation.

We’ve worked really hard to create better relationships with the three hospital networks in our catchment at all levels and while nothing is perfect, we were able to link more than 500 COVID positive patients with local GPs, allowing for escalations and a more rapid response if they were ill. This program relied heavily on general practice support.

We were really pleased that the Victorian Government extended the hugely successful Doctors in Secondary Schools Program to 2025 with a further $43.4 million across Victoria. Young people’s physical and mental health has been significantly helped by this program through the pandemic, and we’ve had great support from schools, and local general practices in staffing these services. It’s really important work in supporting our young people’s health.

Throughout the year, we continued to commission programs from the Commonwealth and State Governments. While commissioning services is our bread and butter, we’ve been applying a new lens and engaging more and more with those with lived experience to help better inform the services that we create with service providers.

In our mental health commissioned services alone, more than 6,100 people were assisted across many occasions of service. Also during the year, we continued to commission a range of new programs, taking the total value of our commissioning program to $54.2 million. It has been a great effort. 

SEMPHN’s Board and Executive have spent a lot of time exploring and developing our role into the future, asking, ‘How do we effectively build and enable a stronger primary health care system to enable even better person-centred care and demonstrable community impact?’ 

To take carriage of this and our new strategy, we welcomed Quinn Pawson to the position of CEO in February. Quinn is an experienced CEO and executive in the not-for-profit sector who has successfully led innovation, cultural transformation, mergers and reorganisations, and we are very excited to have him on board. As a result, we’ve already reviewed our approach to our customers and consumers and we look forward to launching our new Strategic Plan in 2023.

In closing, I’d like to extend my thanks to my fellow Directors, our Committees and the members of the Clinical and Community Advisory Council. It’s a privilege to be working with such an outstanding, skilled and insightful team of people. 

And on behalf of the Board, I would also like thank our Executive Leadership Team and staff for their tremendous work in supporting the work of primary health providers across south east Melbourne and I look forward to building stronger partnerships for a more resilient and healthier future for our community.

Take care and stay safe

Sue Renkin – SEMPHN Chair