Funding community supported rural primary care trials – Expansion of the IMOC Program - Round 5

This new grant opportunity is to enable the implementation of new innovative primary care service delivery models and determine whether these models improve the attractiveness of rural practice and lead to better delivery of health service to communities in rural and remote Australia, Modified Monash (MM) Model 3-7 locations.

The Program’s primary focus is to support organisations to:

• trial innovative, culturally safe and responsive, multidisciplinary models of primary care in rural and remote communities; and
• evaluate whether the models improve provision of health care in rural and remote communities and lead to better health outcomes.

The objectives of the program are to:

•  trial a range of locally co-designed innovative multidisciplinary models of primary care to address chronic workforce shortages and access issues across a range of rural and remote geographic contexts and involving a wide range of stakeholders;
• learn from funded trials and share learnings that will allow other communities to apply place based innovative models; and
• generate robust evidence about which models work where and assess the financial sustainability for stakeholders.

The program aims to improve the capacity and quality of and access to culturally safe health services in rural and remote communities. This program recognises that models of care which are successful in metropolitan areas may not be suitable outside of metropolitan or regional towns because communities and health facilities are dispersed and have different workforce profiles. Trials also seek to support and encourage health professionals to work in rural and remote multidisciplinary health teams to improve the health outcomes of people living in these locations.