To develop healthy communities where we breed a culture of wellness, improve health outcomes and health literacy, and move from reactive to proactive care and prevention, then consumers/patients need to drive their own health care process and push our health professionals to stay on point.

Typically, patients are not activated nor engaged in their own care and have become used to relinquishing their decision making to the health professionals around them. Typically, patients didn’t see their role in researching their own risk, the issues that affected their parents and siblings, if they were from certain ethnic groups or socioeconomic bandwidths where the doctor is seen as almost God-like!

Newly diagnosed chronic disease sufferers can experience a multitude of fears of the physical and social effects of their illness, the costs of treating the illness and the powerlessness associated with failing health.

A multifaced approach is required by the GP to offer the best possible and most effective care and guidance until a patient’s last breath, however this can prove to be a challenging situation as many don’t have the time, skills and/or the training to be advocacy agents for their patients.

In fact, being a health advocate within current appointment timeframes can be difficult to achieve.

Being a health advocate assists patients in accessing resources, medications, social supports, and/or specialty consultation. The patient is informed as to what is required and available via Medicare and private health insurers and other funders, and how long they may have to wait for non-urgent interventions. Additionally, appropriate care-planning activities must be in place to ensure the patient reduces the likelihood of further chronic health conditions (prevention) and that they are managing current chronic health conditions well (monitoring).

The LLLS program will provide some of this ‘health advocacy’ for the GP by assessing health risk, educating the patient as to how to self-manage their health condition, assisting with the care-planning process and monitoring the impact of lifestyle changes.

Ideally, this will provide the GP with more opportunity to develop their relationship with their patients and ensure that the are supplying the right support to them.