After Hours Program

After Hours Program & Digital Health in Residential Aged Care Facilities (RACF)

Healthy Ageing in WQPHN continued to take a proactive approach to ageing and empower our older community members to be more informed and aware of their health, and to seek ways to live their lives with as much independence and value as they need.

To meet these needs aged care funding has focused on connection and providing information for the participants.

In the last financial year WQPHN:

• Provided guidance to assist participating RACFs in the region to develop and implement after-hours action plans which will support their residents to access the most appropriate medical services out-of-hours;
• Educated participating RACF staff in out-of-hours health care options and processes for residents;
• Encouraged participating RACFs to implement procedures for keeping residents' digital medical records up to date, particularly following an episode where after-hours care was required utilising My Health Record capabilities;
• Supported engagement between RACFs and their residents' GPs (and other relevant health professionals), as part of afterhours action plan development;
• Enhanced out-of-hours support for residential aged care strategy by providing better access to GPs in after hours and effective use of eHealth technology and systems.

Over the financial year, WQPHN worked with 23 Aged Care Services.

A total of 7,969 participants aged 65 years and above attended various early intervention activities totaling 2,103 occasions of service/group sessions.*

* It's important to note that the number of participants does not necessarily represent unique individuals, as older people have the flexibility to attend multiple occasions and types of early intervention activities during this period.