Improving Access to Healthcare for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Communities: The Multicultural Health Project

About the practice

• Located in the heart of Sunnybank, Times GP primarily serves the local Asian community. They tailor their services to meet the needs of their diverse patients through multilingual clinicians and staff and with an understanding of cultural and lifestyle considerations.

• They have a high proportion of private patients attending the practice with up to 30-40% patients who are non-Medicare card holders.

What inspired the practice to complete this QI activity?

The practice participated in the Multicultural Health Quality Improvement Project to strengthen its ability to identify and respond to the needs of the community. They believe it is essential to enhance their support to patients from cultural and linguistic diverse (CALD) backgrounds by delivering culturally responsive, inclusive, and high-quality care.

The challenge

In Australia, an Individual Health Identifier (IHI) is assigned to individuals to ensure healthcare providers can correctly match health information to the right person at the point of care. Individuals automatically receive an IHI if they are enrolled in Medicare or have a Department of Veteran's Affairs (DVA) card. Others can request for an IHI if they do not have these cards. An IHI will enable an individual to receive electronic prescriptions (e-scripts) and have their medical information recorded on MyHealth Record, the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) and the National Cancer Screening Register (NCSR). 

With a high proportion of patients being non-Medicare holders at Times GP, these patients are often required to attend face-to-face consultation to receive paper scripts. By encouraging non-Medicare patients to register for IHI, it allows better access to healthcare and improved records of their medical information.

With approximately 11,840 active patients and an equivalent of 2.8FTE GPs, the practice needs efficient and easy approach to their registration process.

What we did

The Nurse Supervisor, Ben was the QI Lead of the Multicultural Health Project. He was proactive in understanding their patient population and identifying the challenges they faced using data in the clinical information software to determine the aim of the project. 

The practice adopted a whole-team approach involving all doctors, nurses and reception staff.

The team implemented key actions in the early stage of the project, including:

• Developed their own posters in translated language explaining what an IHI is for and its benefits.

• Created a QR code which linked to IHI information and registration site.

• Provided training to the entire team to ensure team members could explain IHI to patients in simple languages

• Encouraged the applicable patients to register

Results and impact

The practice had 8 patients who reported back their IHI numbers during the 4-month project period which was highly successful. With these patients registered for IHI, it means they now have access to telehealth services and are able to receive e-scripts in a more timely fashion. 

Ben had decided early on during the project that the practice was solely responsible for encouraging their non-Medicare patients to register for IHI and introducing them to the registration portal. The focus was not on assisting with applications nor chasing patients for IHI once granted but aiming at building team members’ capabilities in identifying applicable patients and directing them to the registration link with practice developed tools. This would allow better access to healthcare for their patients with minimal disruption to daily operation when it comes to implementing a sustainable change.

What will the practice do to ensure this becomes business as usual 

With the introduction of registration tool and staff training, the practice will continue to identify and promote IHI to applicable patients when opportunities arise.

What can other practices do to participate?

• Identify practice gaps in your clinic setting with multicultural health lens on – this involves capturing demographic information such as ethnicity, country of birth, language spoken at home and if an interpreter is needed; use data to understand your population; and address the barriers.

• Engage the whole team, including GPs, nurses and reception staff

• Take into consideration the balance between implementing a new process and disruption of daily workflow

Key Message

Be proactive in showing your team and your patients the benefits of the change! Having easy access to tools for your team and the patients will allow the most uptake.