About the APCC

The Australian Primary Care Collaboratives (APCC) Program helps general practitioners (GPs) and primary health care providers work together to:

Improve patient clinical outcomes
Reduce lifestyle risk factors
Help maintain good health for those with chronic and complex conditions and;
Promote a culture of quality improvement in primary health care.

Ultimately, the APCC Program aims to find better ways to provide primary health care services to patients through shared learning, peer support, training, education and support systems.

The Program uses Collaborative methodology, designed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in the USA. This methodology provides a generic quality improvement model that can be applied to achieve incremental, rapid and locally relevant improvements across a broad range of clinical and practice business issues.The APCC Program began as a three-year, $14.6 million initiative funded from the Focus on Prevention - Primary Care Providers Working initiative announced in the 2003 – 2004 Australian Government Budget. The Program is of international significance.

In December 2007 funding was granted for Phase 2 of the APCC Program. Phase 2 is delivered to Divisions and their member practices by the Improvement Foundation (IF).

In July 2009 additional funding was granted to Improvement Foundation to deliver a national wave focusing on two new topics, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), and Chronic Disease Prevention and Self Management (CDPSM). This wave is delivered in addition to the; Access and Care redesign, Diabetes and Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) topic waves.

For more information on Collaboratives see What is a Collaborative?

Last Updated 29 April 2010