McKinnon’s involvement is intended to generate practical lessons about implementation, cost-effectiveness, scalability and the conditions required for the model be scaled to other jurisdictions.

McKinnon is proud to support Safer Care Victoria as it formally launches the Assisted Self-Management Pilot, an initiative designed to help people living with chronic conditions stay well at home and avoid unnecessary hospital admissions.

The pilot has been supported by McKinnon as part of its Public Sector program and our commitment to helping governments deliver better outcomes for Australians.

Australia's federated system creates opportunities for governments to learn from different approaches to shared challenges; yet promising ideas do not always spread easily between jurisdictions. Governments may lack the time, evidence or capacity to identify and share effective approaches, understand why they work and adapt them to a different context.

McKinnon works with governments to identify promising reforms, support their implementation and capture practical lessons that can help successful approaches be sustained, scaled or adopted elsewhere. This work can involve:

• identifying variations in outcomes between jurisdictions and examining the policies or service-delivery approaches that may explain them

• commissioning feasibility and cost-benefit analyses to assess the case for investment

• working with governments, delivery partners and experts to adapt models to local conditions

• supporting implementation, measurement and evaluation

• capturing lessons to inform potential adoption in other states or territories.

The Assisted Self-Management Pilot is a practical example of this approach. Chronic conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive cardiac failure and diabetes are among the leading causes of avoidable hospitalisations in Victoria. Patients can leave hospital without a consistent, coordinated plan for their ongoing care, contributing to repeat presentations and additional pressure on acute services.

The pilot will test a digitally enabled, patient-centred model designed to support people with chronic conditions to manage their health more effectively, with the goal of improving patient outcomes and reducing avoidable pressure on hospitals.

McKinnon has supported the pilot by commissioning research into promising approaches to reducing avoidable hospitalisations and helping develop the feasibility and investment case for the Victorian trial.

Working in partnership with Safer Care Victoria, McKinnon is also providing specialist advice, implementation and evaluation support.

Beyond assessing outcomes in Victoria, the pilot will generate practical lessons about implementation, cost-effectiveness, scalability and the conditions required for the model to succeed. These lessons could help other health services and jurisdictions assess whether and how the model might be adopted.

Scaling reform requires more than showing that an idea is promising, governments also need practical knowledge about implementation, workforce, technology, costs, local adaptation and the experience of patients and clinicians.

This reflects McKinnon's broader objective: not simply to identify promising ideas, but to help governments understand how they can be adapted, sustained and scaled to deliver better outcomes.

Australia does not always need to develop a new solution to every public challenge. Often, part of the answer already exists somewhere within our federation. The opportunity is to recognise promising practice, translate it into new contexts and use the lessons from implementation to accelerate reform.

McKinnon is pleased to support Safer Care Victoria and its partners in this work. We look forward to sharing insights from the pilot and exploring how they can contribute to better public services across Australia.