In late 2019, the Consumers Health Forum joined with the Australian Insitute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) to help raise consumer awareness and understanding about the institute’s significant and long-awaited entry into the gathering of information about primary health care: the National Primary Care Data Asset.

The Data Asset is proposed to fill in that gap by collecting data on primary health care usage and outcomes akin to existing AIHW reports on Australia’s hospitals. It is envisaged that the Data Asset will facilitate a better understanding of what happens to patients in the primary health system including their diagnoses, treatment, outcomes and patient experiences, by bringing together a range of data from various sources over time, including not only from GPs but also from allied health practices. 

For this project the CHF co-ordinated a focus group and two webinars to raise awareness amongst consumers of the project to generate social license for its development and deployment.

The two webinars can be found here and here and a blog summarising the findings of the project can be found here.