Central and Eastern Sydney PHN provides leadership across regional and statewide partnerships to support a more connected, responsive and sustainable health system. We bring together primary care, hospitals, community-managed organisations and government agencies to identify shared priorities, strengthen collaboration and ensure primary care perspectives inform system reform. During 2025-26, this leadership extended across mental health commissioning, joint governance, data sharing and digital health. Through established regional committees and statewide working groups, we helped create the structures, relationships and practical mechanisms needed for organisations to plan together, share information safely and improve coordination across primary, community and hospital care.
Collaboration
During 2025-26, Central and Eastern Sydney PHN led and contributed to several initiatives designed to strengthen collaboration across the health system.
We continued to lead the NSW and ACT Primary Health Network and community-managed organisation working group. This forum brings primary health networks and mental health organisations together to improve transparency, consistency and mutual understanding across commissioning, contracting and reporting. Its work during the year included identifying practical opportunities to reduce duplicated reporting and improve the use of outcome measures.
CESPHN also played a leading role in implementing the NSW Health and NSW Primary Health Networks Joint Statement. This included progressing a statewide agreement to provide a safer and more consistent mechanism for sharing data between NSW Health and primary health networks, and commissioning an independent evaluation of joint governance arrangements across NSW. The evaluation identified progress in establishing regional governance structures and provided recommendations to strengthen accountability, community participation, shared measurement and implementation.
Locally, the Sydney and South Eastern Sydney Joint Executive Committees provided regular senior-level forums for CESPHN, local health districts and specialty health networks to align priorities and progress shared initiatives across primary, community and hospital care.
CESPHN also participated in the Single Digital Patient Record General Practitioner Advisory Working Group, helping ensure general practice perspectives informed system design, information flows and implementation. The group provides clinical and practical advice so the system is relevant and usable for primary care providers and patients.
Together, these initiatives demonstrate CESPHN’s role as a trusted system partner, connecting organisations and turning shared priorities into coordinated action.