Jane Hall, University of Technology Sydney and Kees Van Gool, University of Technology Sydney
Paying doctors a fee for each service they provide isn’t delivering optimal value for the health dollar. Instead, we should pay doctors a lump sum to care for a patient’s medical problem over time.
The funding proposal is no fix for Australia’s health system but it could take some political pressure off the Coalition in the lead up to the 2019 federal election.
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Yes, doctors’ fees should be transparent, but that requirement alone doesn’t go far enough to combat “bill shock”. Specialists should also be required to set fees that are “fair and reasonable”.
A patient collects her medication at a clinic in Khayelitsha, South Africa.
MSF/Sydelle WIllow Smith
African leaders need to up their health allocations to help the new World Health Organisation Director-General meet his health care targets for the continent.
Tedros Ghebreyesus, the newly elected Director-General of the World Health Organisation.
Reuters/Denis Balibouse
There are a number of challenges that the World Health Organisation’s new leader, Ethiopian-born Tedros Ghebreyesus, will have to navigate during his tenure.
Health care costs and rates of chronic disease are rising.
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For real reform to Medicare’s fee-for-service payments model, we need to look for more innovative solutions to how we pay for health care. These can be found in an unlikely place: the United States.
Some regions have had rates of preventable hospital admissions 50% above the state average for more than a decade.
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People ending up in hospital for diabetes, tooth decay, or other conditions that should be treatable or manageable out of hospital is a warning sign of system failure.
This approach will help concentrate efforts on evidence and value rather than ideologically based, slash-and-burn approaches.
AAP Image/Fairfax Media Pool/Andrew Meares
The government must do more to deliver a 21st-century health system – not just to improve its standing with voters but to meet the health needs of all Australians.
The debate about ageing needs to move away from claiming the sky will fall in because of the ageing of the population.
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Health policy was an important factor in the election outcome, but one of the most important issues in the health sector – the impact of out-of-pocket costs – was mostly ignored.
People with chronic illness often report bewilderment with the health system’s complexity.
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States will receive an additional A$2.9 billion from July 2017 to June 2020, with growth in Commonwealth funding capped at 6.5%. The Conversation’s experts respond.
Hospital funding has long been the subject of acrimonious and unedifying funding disputes between the federal and state governments.
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The Commonwealth wants to partially reverse the cuts it made to public hospital funding in the 2014 budget. But the deal has some unwelcome strings attached.
The health sector can learn from other industries that turn to operations research to fix everyday challenges.
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Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne