The newsletter of the Health Care Consumers’ Association Inc.
Volume 11 / Issue 21 / 22 May 2025

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The HCCA Annual General Meeting was held on 20 November 2024. It was good to see so many people in person. We will share more photos in the next newsletter.

Congratulations to all the people who were elected to positions on the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee for 2025 are:

President- Linda Trompf

Vice President - Karin Calford

Treasurer - Tony Krizan

General members - Karen McKernan, Izzy Moss, Emma Baldock, Jo Bothroyd, Keith Willenberg, Miriam Pavic 

(Left to right: Keith, Jo, Karin, Karen, Emma, Linda, Miriam.)

Many thanks to Peta Harbour, Dean Hewson and Bea Vann for their contribution to HCCA as members of the EC over recent years. Peta and Dean did not stand for re-election and Bea reached her maximum term (six years). We have been very fortunate to have your share your insights, experience and skills with us. We look forward to you continuing to contribute as members. 

HCCA has a policy of making a donation to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation in recognition of contribution of retiring EC members. This is part of our commitment to reconciliation, and also our believe that literacy is power.

(Bea Vann and Linda Trompf)

We also released the new strategic plan at the AGM. It is on the HCCA website. We will write more about this in the next newsletter.

Darlene Cox
Executive Director

In this Issue

• Infrastructure Update
• Policy and Research Update
• Health Literacy Update
• Items of Interest

Infrastructure Update

Thank you to all the participants who took part in this year's First Impressions Project!

Two groups of consumers have provided lots of great feedback on specific sites at the Canberra Hospital, Belconnen Community Health Centre and Gungahlin Community Health Centre.

Participants assessed how easy it is to plan your journey, get into the facilities and find your way to your appointment.

We are looking forward to working with Josie Khng at CHS to summarise the feedback about the improvements consumers would like to see at these sites, and more broadly across all CHS facilities in the ACT.

— Darcy
(Infrastructure Project Officer)

Policy and Research Update

The HCCA Policy and Research Team is working with ACT Health to implement VAD in the ACT. The VAD Community and Consumer Consultation Group met for the first time last week. Jess Lamb represents HCCA on this committee. VAD will commence in the ACT from November 2025. There is a lot of work to do before then.

Due to time constraints, we may not be able to consult with HCCA members on VAD via Consumer Bites.

To join HCCA's VAD work, please email Jess at [email protected]. Jess will place you on our mailing list for input on VAD issues and decisions.

— the Policy and Research team
(Jess, Stephen, and Shivana)

Study: Understanding health consumer representatives’ experiences in Australian public health decision-making forums.

• There is very little research that focuses on how health consumer representatives experience their involvement outside of health service settings,
• We know that consumer representatives can face challenges to meaningful participation which leads to tokenism,
• Adding your voice could make a difference to the way health consumer representation is done in Australia.

Are you representing health consumers, community or the general public in:

• Public health decision-making,
• Health system level decision-making, or
• Health policy- or health-related public policy-setting?

The research team would like to hear about your experience in an interview. If you want to add your voice to this study and for more information, please get in touch with Hannah Fielder at [email protected] to arrange an initial chat. Or, click here to fill in a form and one of the team will get in touch with you.

This study has been approved by the University of Tasmania Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) H0031018

Health Literacy Update

This fortnight, the team had the first meeting of the Disability and Health Literacy Project consumer reference group. The reference group includes a diverse mix of consumers, carers, advocates, and support workers. They shared valuable insights about the challenges people face when communicating in health services and getting the information they need. We look forward to working with them to identify key issues and develop recommendations during this project.

The team also facilitated the last focus group for the Australian Medical Council on their review of standards for specialist medical programs.

We ended the fortnight with C Moore delivering an Advance Care Planning (ACP) session for Lung for Life ACT. The group was engaging and most rated the session as excellent. They were appreciative of the valuable information.

A range of consumer resources are available for both eczema and gout. Our Quality Use of Medicines (QUM) Project has co-designed these resources.

The resources can help consumers to better understand and manage both these conditions. Find and share the resources for both gout and eczema through our Consumer Hub for QUM.

And look out for our next topic – Antidepressants and Older People. Useful consumer resources will be released soon!

— the Health Literacy team
(C and Ivapene)

Items of Interest

The new MyWay+ system will commence Wednesday 27 November 2024. This means fairs resume on this date, and people will need to touch on to public transport again.

Passengers can tap on and off with:

• A MyWay+ online account, and download the MyWay+ app from the Apple store and Google play store,
• A physical MyWay+ travel card,
• A credit or debit card.

From Thursday 14^th November 2024, you will have the ability to purchase the physical MyWay+ card, make online MyWay+ accounts, and download the MyWay+ App from the apple store.

To assist in the transition, Transport Canberra customer service representatives will be located at major bus and light rail stops and interchanges over the coming weeks as well as attending community events. If you are seeking assistance a list of upcoming locations and events can be found at the Transport Canberra website or by calling 13 17 10.

For further information visit www.transport.act.gov.au

Do you have a My Health Record but aren’t sure how to make the most of it?

Join CHF in partnership with the Australian Digital Health Agency for ‘Making the most of My Health Record’, a free webinar on Thursday 28 November 2024 at 1pm AEDT.

My Health Record is a powerful digital tool for managing your health, giving you and your healthcare providers access to important health information. It helps give healthcare providers a more complete picture of your health, especially if you have multiple care providers or if you are managing complex health conditions.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• How My Health Record can assist with managing your health, especially if you are living with a chronic condition.
• Ways to use My Health Record to take control of your health journey.
• Information inside My Health Record, including immunisations, pathology and diagnostic imaging reports, prescription and dispensing information and hospital discharge summaries.
• Tips for securely sharing your health information with healthcare providers.

Tools for ageing well with traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a resource to help people with a brain injury to manage their health as they age. It offers tips on how to manage your health with some useful resources and suggests when seeing a health expert would be helpful.

The tools were developed with older people with a brain injury, family members of people with a brain injury, and expert clinicians.

The tools are available on the Connectivity – Tools for ageing well with traumatic brain injury website. There are also printable copies of the tools on the Connectivity website.

Are you a health professional passionate about improving patient outcomes?

The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care are running a short online survey on care coordination and post sepsis support.

Your insights can help improve coordinated care, discharge planning, and follow up care for people with sepsis and those bereaved by sepsis. Survey and interview data, together with the views of sepsis survivors, families, carers and people bereaved by sepsis, will be used to inform a model of care principles and the business case for health service investment in coordinated care and post-sepsis support.

The survey takes approximately 10 minutes and is open until 6 December 2024.

Complete the short online survey on the Commission's website.

When: 6-7pm, 26 November 2024

Where: Online Via Zoom

Experts in Integrated care have called for a shift from 'people-centred' to 'people-driven' care, emphasizing the need to empower individuals and communities to take an active role in their health decisions. The International Foundation for Integrated Care are hosting a webinar that will discuss:

• What does meaningful involvement in care look like?
• How can we address power imbalances?
• What are examples of successful co-creation with communities?
• Can people-centred care tackle inequalities and improve outcomes?

**FREE interpreter services available over the phone via the Australian Government’s Translation and Interpreting Service (TIS) on 131 450**

© 2024 Health Care Consumers' Association Inc, All rights reserved. Edited by Darlene Cox.

Our phone number is:
02 6230 7800

Consumer Bites is the newsletter of the Health Care Consumers' Association. Consumer Bites provides a small snippet of health related articles our members might find interesting to consider and analyse. The HCCA does not endorse any opinions or the claims contained within the articles.

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