Our approach

Better healthcare for Australians in regional and rural communities

Accessing specialist care, workforce shortages, limited resources such as access to transport and often higher proportion of people with chronic conditions for example create challenges for the delivery of healthcare in regional and rural Australia. These challenges can result in higher rates of higher rates of hospitalisation and death, with poorer access to healthcare services. For older people in these areas, these challenges are heightened by their often more complex health needs.

Home-based healthcare is developing as a solution to these challenges. Rural and regional healthcare providers need a simple process to help them decide which solutions to deliver for the communities they serve, and how they can best deliver them.

And that’s where DELIVER comes in.

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Our work

DELIVER uses research and engagement with rural and regional older people and their carers, health providers and peak bodies to:

Understand what the people and healthcare providers of western Victoria need most in terms of home-based healthcare services.
Design and test the best way to deliver these services.
Build a model that ensures home-based healthcare services will continue to grow and expand across the region and beyond.

To achieve this, DELIVER will:

Support the growth of research in western Victoria through training, support services and funding of new research roles.
Build a system to ensure that research findings can quickly be translated to improvements in healthcare.

Our aims

DELIVER aims to leave a sustainable legacy of better health outcomes and a greater research capacity across western Victoria, via our two key streams of work:

Improving home-based healthcare in western Victoria

DELIVER will work closely with older people and their carers, health services and researchers across western Victoria to:

Identify the home-based healthcare services being offered in the region, as well as the issues and barriers that are preventing the community from accessing the full benefits of these services.
Prioritise the services that have the greatest potential to improve the health of the community, once current issues are overcome.
Design solutions to the issues impeding these highest priority home-based healthcare services. Solutions may involve new or improved tools, technology, delivery methods or processes.
Provide guidance to health services and the community about how to implement these solutions and maximise the benefits of the highest priority home-based healthcare solutions.
Include mechanisms for testing and evaluation at each stage of the process so that there is clear evidence of the effect of these solutions on the services.
Document each step of the way, so that the process can be adapted to other regional areas and across Australia.

Growing research and translation in western Victoria

Health services across Western Victoria are fortunate to benefit from a dedicated and highly skilled workforce. However, rural and regional health services have less access to research infrastructure and funding than their metropolitan counterparts, and therefore less capacity for their workforce to conduct research and translate the findings of that research and research from around the world into local healthcare delivery.

DELIVER will work to boost research capacity in the region and support rapid translating research findings into healthcare in the region in a sustainable way by:

Supporting and funding local health practitioners to participate in research via the design and testing of priority home-based healthcare services and solutions through the DELIVER project.
Expanding the Western Alliance Supporting Translation of Research in Rural and Regional areas (STaRR) program to educate and train more health practitioners in research and research translation skills.
Funding Research Translation Coordinators across the region to mentor health practitioner researchers.

DELIVER's goal is to create a sustainable, positive impact on health and increase the research capacity in western Victoria, achieved through two distinct efforts.