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Connecting Your Patient With Consistent Community Support

  • 8 mins read
Connecting Your Patient With Consistent Community Support
  • 8 mins read

Table of Contents:

Connecting Your Patient With Consistent Community Support

In this series we have discussed the evidence role, the discharge fortnight, between reviews, medication routine, continuity, escalation and the handover. The practical question that remains: when a patient does need support, what does it take from you?

The honest constraint

Every route a psychiatrist takes must be quick and efficient, in minutes. The design below keeps the parts only you can do with you, and sends the rest where it belongs.

Four moves

Name it out loud. Many patients and families don't know support can be found, searched and chosen at all. The sentence that starts everything is yours, there is help for exactly that, and it is more arrangeable than you think.

Point at the funding. Triage time: 30 seconds. NDIS if there's a plan, and loop in the plan coordinator. Aged care if that fits. Private, if that's the honest quickest option.

Write the handover. The checklist from the last article, once, in about ten minutes. Every worker the patient meets starts from it.

Let the patient and family search. On Support Network they look for support by location, experience, language and availability, they read profiles and meet before committing. Verification and screening are at platform level.

What it costs

No cost to patients, families, support coordinators or plan managers.

What we are not

Not a provider of treatment services, not a clinical provider, not the decision-maker for the patient's choice. We widen their options, we don't make the choice.

How this plays out in practice

Suppose the patient from the first article in this series had finally been granted access, but with nothing arranged for what came next. The four moves fit across two appointments, under twenty minutes in total. Three months later, that support is the best hour in his week.

Next steps

Pick one support gap that you have been carrying for one patient and run the four moves.

Connect Your Patient With Consistent Support. Available to patients, families and coordinators or plan managers at no cost. Talk to Michelle at michelle@supportnetwork.com.au.

About the Author

Michelle Flynn

Michelle Flynn

Head of Marketing & Innovation | Building Australia’s Connected Care Ecosystem | Support Network

Seasoned marketing and innovation leader with two decades of experience turning complex service organisations into growth engines. Currently Head of Marketing & Innovation at Support Network, where I am building Australia’s most connected disability and aged care ecosystem.
I lead the growth of Support Network’s national Partnership Program — a free, Australia-wide collaboration network that already connects trusted providers, Support Coordinators, plan managers, allied health and community organisations so that when the right opportunity arises, we know exactly who to call. [Read more]

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