Addressing imploding health care systems: Is primary care reform really the answer?

Claire has been active in integrated care innovation, education and research since the early 90s, and more recently, extensively involved in health services research and reform. She has been a member of all 4 national Primary Health Care Strategy and Reform Reference Groups—guiding forces behind Australia’s National Health Reform Agreements. Her description of the ‘beacon’ practice model, piloted at Inala Primary Care, was adopted as both the clinical prototype for the Australian Association of Academic General Practitioner’s endorsed model for GP Superclinics, and the basis for UQ’s successful $10 million Superclinic tenders.

Claire has been a national driver in general practice capacity building—publishing and presenting widely on the topic and sitting on national Advisory Committees for Ministers Plebisek, Ley, and Hunt. She has been Clinical Director of two $ 2.5 million Centres for Research Excellence in Primary Care Reform—one exploring new models of integrated care between hospital and community, the other investigating the impact of researcher and end-user ‘co-creation’ on clinical quality, patient experience, governance and models of care. She is currently Director of the MRI-UQ Centre for Health System Reform and Integration, and research lead for the Qld eConsultant Partnership Program (QePP). The Centre utilizes a cocreation approach to create, implement, evaluate and translate innovative models of care expanding primary care service delivery.

Her current primary area of research interest is in health system and digital health reform, a topic on which she has published and presented internationally. Her MD Thesis ‘Building an Integrated Health Care Delivery System around Primary Care’ explored successful reform strategies, and she co-authored “Achieving Effective Health Care Integration—the Essential Guide”, a publication to support grassroots clinicians and executives. Claire was heavily involved in the development of Australian Divisions of General Practice, Medicare Locals, and Primary Health Networks and was a Ministerial appointment to lead the National Review of Afterhour’s Primary Health Care in 2014. She has been Chair of UQ’s highly successful International Health Care Reform Conferences since 2000.

In 2021, she was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for services to primary health reform and general practice medicine.

Claire is a Non-Executive Director of the Hospitals Contribution Fund of Australia Ltd (HCF), Australia’s largest NFP private health insurer, and Chair of the HCF Research Foundation. She was a member of the PrimaryHealth Care 10 Year Plan 2022-32 Steering Committee, and has been both a past Chair and President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. She is a Provost of the RACGP Qld Faculty Council, and a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee for the Medical Journal of Australia. She is an active clinician in Brisbane south, and Member of Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care PaRIS Governance Committee.

She has been a Finalist in both the Research Australia and Telstra Business Women’s Awards, and is current President, Sandakan Prisoner Of War Family and Friends Queensland.