St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney Chronic Pain Service (CPS) invited healthy partnerships to review their model of care – to outline current practices, identify leading practices and highlight opportunities for improvement.
Established in 1962, the CPS was Australia’s first chronic pain clinic and has been recognised as a leading clinic since. The service provides a range of services for inpatients, patients presenting to the emergency department, and non-admitted patients. It delivers education and capability support for primary care practitioners and training specialists. SVHS is an accredited training site for the Faculty of Pain Medicine of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists. We were delighted to be invited to work with a team with this level of expertise.
The project involved collaborating with the team to review existing service documents, service data and information and examining other leading chronic pain models and services. We worked with the clinical team to clarify the local model of care and test some ideas for improvement. Our model of care report includes a patient journey map, critical service elements, services profiles, governance and staffing arrangements, workflows and responsibilities, funding arrangements and patient outcomes. It highlights strengths, challenges and opportunities and provides recommendations for change.
