The Leadership Challenge in Primary and Community Care
29 Apr 2026
As health systems grapple with rising demand and increasingly complex patient needs, the role of primary and community services has never been more critical or more challenged. We had the pleasure to spoke with Kerryn Anderson, Executive Director Primary & Community Services and Chief Allied Health Officer, brings a system wide lens to this reality, where clinical care, social factors and service design must come together to achieve meaningful outcomes. This is what she told us:
- Primary and community services are often where system pressure shows up first. Where are you currently seeing the greatest strain, and how are leaders needing to respond differently?
It’s no secret that acute hospitals are experiencing unprecedented demand. This does result in increased strain on Primary and Community Services, not only in enabling step down care from hospitals but in providing care that prevents the hospital admission in the first instance. The greatest strain we are seeing at the moment across all settings is the increased complexity of patients, particularly those with multiple co-morbidities combined with complex social issues. Our clinicians are highly skilled and have received really great training around gold standard treatment for the physical conditions they see, but the reality is that the majority of care we provide in primary care requires our patients to go away and implement changes at home – whether that be taking their medications correctly, implementing an exercise program or changing their diet (the list is endless).
If their social issues haven’t been addressed, these efforts can be fruitless and clinicians are left feeling unrewarded in the work they are doing with patients who we would have previously labelled as ‘non compliant’. As leaders, we need to enable as much as possible, flexibility in the way we develop our services and support our clinicians to think outside the box to get the best outcomes for their patients. We also need to help them be OK that we may not be able to achieve the ‘gold standard’ outcome all of the time but even helping someone achieve one goal is a win.
- As Chief Allied Health Officer, how do you see the role of allied health shifting in the broader health system and what opportunities are still underutilised?
It is my belief that Allied Health is no longer seen as the third clinical workforce behind medical and nursing. Allied Health itself just needs to believe that and continue to lift and demonstrate what can be achieved. From my perspective we are still underutilizing the opportunity to create advanced and extended practice roles. These are particularly important for more rural communities where clinical workforce can be harder to come by. If we can safely increase the scope of the workforce that is there, they will be better able to service their communities and potentially provide incentive for clinicians to move rurally for what could be really interesting and varied roles.
- For leaders responsible for community-based services, what are the critical capabilities or mindset shifts needed to balance growing demand with sustainable, high-quality care?
As I mentioned earlier you have to be able to work with a flexible mindset around the resource/funding you have. Don’t be constrained by traditional thinking about what people and funding can/can’t do. Guidelines are guidelines for a reason unless mandated you can flex. It’s also important to be able to lift your gaze and think about what future state of high quality healthcare delivery can be look like. Be prepared to be a little bit bold and brave in putting innovative ideas forward and be clear about what success might look like.
