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October 08, 2007
Public opinion polls consistently place health at, or near, the top of any list of public issues important to voters. It has taken them a while, but each of the major parties has broached the topic of health.They have done so in a way that leaves much to be desired since electoral politics overrules health care reform, given the present dysfunctional "system" is constituted by a series of fiefdoms and is characterized by a large number of adverse events.
Leahy
The real reform need is to reduce the emphasis on hospital care and shift the focus on primary care so as top lessen the number of people going to hospital. That understanding of health policy is not rocket science, is it? Public hospitals have major problems because of ever-increasing demand, under-funding and shortages of health professionals.
John Dwyer, University of NSW professor of medicine and founder of the Australian Health Care Reform Alliance says:
It is madness that states get more money from the commonwealth if they have more overnight admissions to hospitals It costs $750 a day to lie in a hospital bed before you get your first aspirin and much, much more in an intensive care unit or an emergency department. We need better community care. Seventy per cent of the hospital admissions of older Australians who are in very poor condition could be avoided if there was effective community intervention.
We need to swing the healthcare system around to prevention and maintaining wellness and early diagnosis. Half the diabetics in Australia don't know they have diabetes. (Most) people who are going to have a heart attack don't know they have high blood pressure. Countries like New Zealand and Canada have markedly reduced the demand on hospital services by investing in better primary care. It is intolerable in Australia that you are five times more likely to die prematurely from a preventable illness if you live in Sydney's outer west than on the north shore.
The continuum of care that should link primary, community and hospital services is made all but impossible because of the inefficiencies associated with the great divide, and the political buck passing, between the Commonwealth and the states.
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Gary,
Menadue, who chairs the think tank Centre for Policy Development, says that another core problem is a 19th-century workforce structure.
This workforce stuff is a real reform need.