The Sydney Children's Hospitals Network

Finalist: Excellence in Multicultural Healthcare​ Award

​Providing Enhanced Access to Health Services (PEACH) is an initiative at the Sydney Children's Hospitals Network (SCHN).

PEACH aims to improve healthcare access, inequity and outcomes for children and young people (CYP) from priority populations. This includes CYP from culturally and linguistically diverse and refugee/asylum seeker backgrounds.

The PEACH team analysed electronic medical records from SCHN between 2015 and 2019. The baseline data demonstrated inequity in health access and outcomes for CYP from priority populations. For example, CYP from refugee-like backgrounds are more likely to have preventable hospitalisations, chronic conditions, longer hospital stays, and readmissions within 28 days.

Experience-Based Co-design Methodology was used through interviews and co-design workshops with priority population consumers and staff. Five advisory groups and a steering committee were established to collaboratively address these inequities.

Co-designed solutions included:

• improved identification including the addition of a centralised ‘Priority Populations’ alert tile within the electronic medical record
• improved care coordination
• prioritisation on waitlists, and
• translated factsheets about medication access.​
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