The COACH Program is currently operating in the public health system in all Australian states. Coaches deliver the program from a variety of different health organisations including hospitals, community centres, specialised call centres and state health department offices.
A four year follow-up of the second (multicentre) randomised controlled trial in public hospital patients, independently conducted by the Victorian Health Department, proved that The COACH Program keeps patients with cardiovascular disease out of hospital.
A two year follow-up of public hospital patients shows that improvements in risk factor status and adherence to medications achieved at 6 months are sustained for more than 18 months after cessation of The COACH Program.
The COACH Program can overcome the worse cardiovascular risk factors in public patients in an equitable fashion to private patients. Although public health patients have much poorer disease risk factor levels than their private counterparts, at the end of The COACH Program the cardiovascular risk factors and adherence to recommended medications was similar for both groups.
The COACH Program is continually being updated, and coaches trained, in line with the current best practice guidelines to ensure that patients are at all times receiving the most up to date and accurate information.
The KPIs from the program are all obtained from The COACH Program software application including detailed recruitment statistics, baseline clinical, social and demographic characteristics, the proportion of coached patients achieving guideline recommended risk factor targets; the proportion of coached patients taking the recommended medications.
The current customer base have conducted their own extensive research of patients that have been offered The COACH Program and those who were not offered The COACH Program. The outcome of these results have highlighted the financial benefit achieved by customers when assessing the costs of delivering health outcomes to patients on The COACH Program against those not utilising The COACH Program and these financial results have led to expansion of the program with existing customers.
Surveyors from the ACHS (Nov 2010) reported that:
Surveyors from the ACHS reported that the overall quality of culture of The COACH Program is driven by:
There is a ‘gap’ between the guideline recommended treatments patients with chronic disease should be receiving as against what they are actually receiving.
> Why it’s needed
The COACH Program leads the world with its innovative coaching prevention program for people with chronic disease.
> The Coach program
