From Clinician to Commissioner

The need to develop a workforce who can deliver on the purpose of enhancing equity of access to primary care has been identified by one of the 31 Primary Health Networks (PHN) established by the Australian Government in 2015. Over almost a decade, Hunter New England and Central Coast PHN has been undertaking assessments of its organisational capability to commission primary care services for the local community. The outcome of these assessments and of a training needs analysis for team members engaged in commissioning has lead to the development of a training program which is growing in sophistication. This has lead to the development of a Primary Care Commissioning Development Centre, which coordinates education and training for PHN teams, service providers and primary care clinicians in many aspects of the commissioning of primary care.