This is how one country is doing it, with the Government jumping in for relief. Granted Australia is not quite as bad in the economic hurt area as the US is right now so they have some additional positives going in their direction. What is being emphasized here too is standards and better healthcare IT integration. 
As stated below if the territories do not sign up, it will go to the polls at the elections due later this year and yes there are some pretty steep taxes here for the support and services. They too have had issues with paying physicians as reported a year ago.
Hospitals across Australia Dealing with Crisis Situation
I had this story where the hospitals were having to get supplies from the “local vet” back in 2008.
Hospital 'gets supplies from local vet' – Australia
What happened when their health insurance premiums went up, 750,000 ditched coverage, so it was not working well and the increases here were from 4 to 10 percent to be passed on, not as high as what we are looking at from 10-39%.
Premiums up as 750,000 ditch cover – Australia
But even as they ditched their insurance carriers, Australia still has the “Dole” to take care of those who need care to fall back on and it appears from this article the “Dole” is up for some significant upgrades and improvements through taxes.
Health insurance to rise in Australia – Same Issues, Different Country but they do have the “Dole”
They have designated a fund for the additional revenue in the National Hospital Fund. With our healthcare being debated and the “soap opera” type of show we have going on in Washington, I thought as a comparison this was interesting to see what other countries are doing to tackle the challenge of reform. We do have folks in positions that are “non participants” with their own use of Health IT, so thus the understanding and comprehension needed to create laws for citizens is getting real sticky and difficult, with emotional outcries on items that seem to make no sense to the big picture in Washington regarding reform.
At the World Tourism Health Conference this year I spoke with an Australian business development manager from a hospital in Brisbane who was also there exploring opportunities. He stated that internally they somewhat are already doing an internal tourism effort within the country, I would guess similar to what we do here in the US with different states, but he felt that the business model they used is not that entirely different from a world tourism concept.
This will be interesting to follow and see how their journey into healthcare reform shapes up with these monumental changes. BD
In what he called the most significant reform since the introduction of Medicare, Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, announced that the government would take over 60% of the funding of the country's hospital system in exchange for about one-third of the Australian states’ goods and
services tax (GST) revenue.
The government, he said, would “build a new national health and hospital network to deliver better health and better hospitals by establishing a national network that is funded nationally, and run locally.” The eight state-run systems will become part of one national network. There will be one set of national standards to drive and deliver better hospital services.
Whereas all revenues currently raised by the GST are re-distributed to the states, the government would take around one-third of those revenues, he disclosed, and “place it in a new National Hospital Fund to be spent only on health and hospitals.”
“We will fund 60% of recurrent expenditure on research and training functions undertaken in public hospitals,” he reiterated. “We will fund 60% of capital expenditure - both operating and planned new capital investment - to maintain and improve public hospital infrastructure. Over time, we will also pay up to 100% of the efficient price of ‘primary care equivalent’ outpatient services provided to public hospital patients.”
In exchange for relieving pressures on state budgets from hospital funding, the government will require system-wide reforms to “create a better integrated, unified national health and hospitals network, with national standards, national transparency and national accountability.”
He will put the health reform package the states on April 11 at the next meeting of the Council of Australian Governments. If the states and territories do not sign up to the reforms, the government will take the package to the next election due later this year.
Australia Announces Healthcare Shake-up
0 comments :
Post a Comment