The Early Years …

EdHealth Australia Director, Jayne Lehmann worked at Flinders Medical Centre, where she did her Graduate Nurse year and then worked for 18 months on the diabetes ward. Jayne moved to the Diabetes Education Unit in 1986, initially working as the Registered Nurse, progressed to Clinical Nurse and then Clinical Nurse Consultant. Flinders Medical Centre provided a broad clinical exposure to the range of specialties in diabetes care and education. This included paediatricc, obstetrics and gynaecology, medical and surgical inpatient and outpatient services. Over the next ten years, Jayne worked with neonates, children and adolescents with newly diagnosed and established type 1 diabetes, women with gestational diabetes, women with type 1 and type 2 diabetes during pregnancy as well as the many medical and surgical care people with diabetes require. Inpatient and outpatient care was integral to the work, even setting-up a ground breaking diabetes education satellite service at a local general practice.

Jayne had two daughters over this period of time and in 1996 she returned to work from maternity leave after the birth of her second daughter, Sarah. At 4 months of age, Sarah had her first seizure, beginning a journey towards a diagnosis of Dravet Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder causing unstable epilepsy, an intellectual disability, scoliosis, language disorders and oppositional behaviour. When the nanny Jayne had trained to care for her daughters resigned at the end of day 1 of her return to work, Jayne resigned her position at Flinders before the end of the week.

The Early Years … Jayne Lehmann Diabetes Education Consultancy

Fortunately that isnt’ the end of the story!

Jayne sat down and did a business plan to work out how she would continue her career. A flexible work environment was required to enable her to provide the care her daughters required, while enabling her to use and further develop her diabetes care and education skills.

At the end of 1996 Jayne registered her business name, ‘Jayne Lehmann Diabetes Education Consultancy’, developing a home-based business, working with South Australian and interstate organisations as a consultant the education provider.

Jayne designed, created and implemented customer diabetes education and support programs for pharmaceutical industry partners. These programs were trialed in South Australia and rolled out across Australia as some of the early customer support programs in primary healthcare, supporting people with diabetes in general practice and the community pharmacy settings.

Working from home gave Jayne the capacity to spend time with her girls, support Sarah’s therapy and health needs and create a small business offering consultancy and education services away from the hospital setting. Sarah’s challenges took Jayne and her family along a path that was to eventually influence the focus of her career and business. Jayne had another daughter along the way … so life was pretty busy!

Jayne collaborated with two other nurses running sole practitioner businesses in Adelaide to offer education programs for aged care staff, using the business name ‘EdHealth Australia’. When the collaboration dissolved, Jayne took over naming rights and re-named her business EdHealth Australia. A few years later, Jayne established herself as a brand people could rely on for innovative models of care, honest and entertaining commentary and as an innovator and leader of private practice models of care. She was appointed the Editor of the Australian Diabetes Educator’s Association (ADEA) Australian Diabetes Educator Magazine, which provided her with a national platform on which to inform and inspire ADEA members across Australia. People enjoyed the publication and reading the broad cross section of articles.

An expertise in business also enabled Jayne to support Credentialled Diabetes Educators to set-up a private practice in Australia and helped establish and Chair the Australian Diabetes Educator’s Association Private Practice Special Interest Group. Jayne explored models of care to introduce diabetes education clinics in general practice after Credentialled Diabetes Educators were approved to apply for Medicare Provider numbers. We believe Jayne was possibly the first Credentialled Diabetes Educator in Australia to receive a provider number This was the beginning of Medicare reimbursed services via the Enhanced Primary Care Chronic Disease Management program. Jayne had clinics running in 3 sites, including a specialised service for people with intellectual disability at Minda Inc. on the Minda Campus in Brighton, South Australia.

Jayne used a process of business re-branding to establish, EdHealth Australia as a brand, delivering diabetes support services as a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) registered provier. Services were developed over 2019 and launched in 2019, opening up access to services across Australia.

The COVID 19 pandemic created a national need for online education, with lockdowns making it harder for people to come together for face-to-face training. With a new learning management system added to the EdHealth website, we were just about ready to launch the online version of our previously face to face education program for support workers, Diabetes Care in the Community.

There’s nothing like being in the right place at the right time … and the launch was well received, and the course subsequently re-branded Diabetes 4 Disability (D4D). The D4D course was the starting point, with a range of Diabetes 4 Disability services added over the years. We are now creating individualised, multi-level systems of diabetes support that wrap around a person with an intellectual disability, or other other cognitive disability and/or psycho-social disability.

EdHealth Australia is now recognised as a trusted NDIS provider creating innovative systems of support focused on the diabetes and disability needs of people with complex disability care and support. This expertise has been developed by focusing on the rights of people with a disability to get equitable access to quality health services that deliver to them better health.