SWSPHN Antenatal Shared Care Program

The Clinical Excellence Commission (CEC) has updated the Safety Alert for Streptococcus A to both paediatric and pregnant/ postnatal populations. For full Safety Alert details, please click the image.

General Practitioners can refer pregnant women, or partners of pregnant women, to the Quit for New Life Smoking Cessation Program.

Details of the program are below. To access the referral, please click on the image.

SWSLHD wishes to bring to the attention of GPs providing antenatal care the incidence of positive Group A streptococcus cases amongst pregnant women in South West Sydney.

Linked below is a recent Safety Notice from NSW Health relating to Maternal sepsis due to invasive Group A streptococcus (iGAS) cases with considerations for newborns and peripartum women. Group A streptococcus infections amongst antenatal and postpartum women can cause rapid deterioration.

If identified, transfer to hospital for rapid and aggressive treatment is required. Please consider signs and symptoms if you have unwell pregnant or postnatal women presenting to your practice.

Accessibility to non-invasive prenatal testing is changing in South West Sydney.

Expert presenters will engage and inform GPs and obstetricians about the upcoming changes to prenatal testing within South West Sydney Local Health District at this free event. Click the image to register.

NIPT – how it works and potential pitfalls in screening. Professor Jon Hyett

NIPT Technologies – Value of SNPs. Mark Hajjar

Integrating NIPT into first trimester pregnancy assessment. A/Professor Indika Alahakoon

Plans for first trimester pregnancy assessment in SWSLHD. Prof Jon Hyett

The value of carrier screening: US experience. Mark Hajjar

Jon Hyett is a Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Western Sydney University, and Clinical Academic Specialist, Obstetrics and Materno-Fetal Medicine, Liverpool Hospital and South Western Sydney Local Health District

Indika Alahakoon is a Clinical Assoc. Professor in MFM - Fetal Medicine University of Sydney, Senior Staff Specialist - Westmead Hospital, Consultant Obstetrician and Sonologist - Centre for Women’s Ultrasound Westmead and Bella Vista

Mark Hajjar is a Medical Science Liaison with Natera, USA.

Click on the image to register for this event.

The event is sponsored by Natera, the NIPT service under agreement with NSW Health and SWSLHD. CPD should be self recorded for this event.

The Antenatal Shared Care Guidelines provide direction and clinical guidance to recognised ANSC GP providers. The Guidelines have been reviewed and updated to be in line with changes to antenatal care provision as directed by NSW Health and the Pregnancy Care Guidelines (2021).

Updates include strategies aimed to identify risk of stillbirth and fetal growth restriction through the Safer Baby Bundle.

The associated ANSC Protocol, has also been updated to align with the ANSC Guidelines.

Both the Guidelines and Protocol can be found within the ANSC Folder.

Please discard previous versions of the Guidelines and Protocol.

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is 30 times more common than Toxoplasmosis and Listeria.

In Australia, more than 400 babies every year are born with a life-long disability caused by CMV, including deafness, epilepsy, intellectual impairment, cerebral palsy and, in rare, cases death. This makes CMV the most common infectious cause of disabilities in newborn babies.(Cerebral Palsy Alliance)

An online CPD module is available through Praxhub, providing 1.5CPD self-record points, to provide further information to GPs about CMV. An account with Praxhub is required to access the activity, accessible here.

Early engagement for pregnant women to antenatal care is critical. Pregnant women need to be connected with their hospital antenatal clinic by 13 weeks gestation, which means that the woman requires a referral earlier than 12 weeks gestation.

Women can connect themselves to the antenatal clinic via the self referral service: Booking in My Pregnancy (BiMP). She still requires a GP referral prior to attending her appointment.

General Practitioners can also refer women directly to the antenatal clinic via BiMP.

Simple instructions for clinician use of BiMP can be found here.

Poster resources in English, Arabic, Vietnamese, and combined language are available in the Resource Folder.

South West Sydney Local Health District (SWSLHD) Maternity Services is undertaking one of the largest scale redesign projects ever attempted within the history of the Local Health District. The Antenatal Redesign Project is seeking to change a 100 year old system of antenatal care.

The overall purpose of the project is to provide safe, equitable care that is accessible to all women and broaden the implementation of first trimester screening. Three working parties have been established and each include representatives from the General Practitioners of South West Sydney. The first working party is focused on consumer information and engagement, with a priority on women receiving timely and culturally specific information. The second working party has an emphasis on the referral processes, with the last working party focusing on the coordination of first trimester screening for all women in SWSLHD.

The consumer information and engagement working party wants to hear directly from all general practitioners. Focus group sessions have been set aside to hear from you, for you to provide your thoughts on antenatal care, and how to improve systems and processes between GP’s and SWSLHD hospitals.

Should you have any questions about the focus groups or would like to be involved and cannot attend a session, please contact Nicole Grieg- Antenatal Redesign Project Manager- via Nicole.grieg@health.nsw.gov.au or 0419 440 943.

Booking in My Pregnancy (BiMP) is an online questionaire that women complete to register their pregnancy with their local maternity service within South West Sydney Local Health District. Women complete the questionaire via their computer or personal device, and at completion a PDF summary is generated and automatically sent to their local hospital.

The woman can access the questionaire via scanning the QR code or through the link.

The online questionaire facilitates the identification of risk factors that the woman may have which can impact their pregnancy.

The questionaire can be completed in English, Arabic or Vietnamese. An English PDF version is sent to the hospital automatically. From there the hospital will contact the woman to book her first appointment.

The address that the woman enters into the questionaire is geo-locked to that location, and the PDF summary is sent to the hospital local to that nominated address.

There is an option for the GP to complete either the questionaire on behalf of the woman or a referral via the BiMP landing page.

All information collected via the questionaire is kept securely on the South West Sydney Local Health District computer servers.

Recommendations have changed for syphillis screening during pregnancy following an increase in case numbers across NSW. Cases have been reported even amongst population groups that were not previously considered to be high risk. A safety notice has been distributed to NSW Health, advising clinicians to screen antenatal women twice during pregnancy. The recommeded times for screening during pregnancy are at initial pregnancy screening and repeated again at 26-28 weeks gestation. The safety notice can viewed in full via the Clinical Excellence Commission.