The Super Clinics program of the Government is already running into enormous trouble.
The government will fund 59 clinics with major funds - up to $10 million - the rest will be funded on smaller grants.
After 3 years just 3 are working - in Ballan, Victoria, Nelson Bay in NSW and Strathpine in Queensland.
We see the Super Clinics set up in areas not because of doctor shortage but because of politically expediency.
In so many ways we have a very successful health system. We live the 2nd longest in the Western World at a cost to GDP very similar to that of the NHS in the UK and yet they live 2 years less than we do.
However Australia continues to import failed ideas from the UK - ideas that are being questioned there and changed. Ideas that have proven to be too expensive. Ideas that are ideologically driven.
Continue Reading July 22nd, 2010
A national electronic health care record system would cost Australia billions of dollars and the highly fragmented nature of healthcare record keeping across Australia could make a centralised system difficult to implement.,
Continue Reading March 18th, 2010
Our section was under-budget by hundreds of thousands of dollars, necessitating we blow all the unspent money before the end of the financial year. Unfortunately, ”training” did not mean I would finally get some training. ”Training” consisted of hastily booked, dubiously relevant conferences and courses, most of which were conveniently located a long way from Canberra.
Despite my short length of service, I was included in the spending free-for-all. I later found myself in a plush Sydney harbourside hotel with hundreds of dollars in unnecessary travel allowance - everything, including meals, flights and accommodation, was covered by the department. I was attending a conference on Web 2.0, a topic I was mildly interested in but which had nothing to do with my duties.
Continue Reading March 18th, 2010
How to Cure Health Care - Milton Freidmen. A longer version of this essay appeared in Public Interest, winter 2001
Continue Reading July 17th, 2009
The supporters of competency based training believe that if you can do something, you should be allowed to do it. … In medicine, competency must be built on a high foundation of knowledge. There are no shortcuts.
Continue Reading July 16th, 2009
Under pressure from various groups, the NSW government set up the ‘Sentinel Events Review Committee’ in 2003. Its construction was far from ideal, in that its Orwellian name isn’t one that the general public would realise covers mental health deaths – suicide and homicide.
The Committee also operates in strict secrecy – its members are anonymous; and under threat of several months’ imprisonment or a $40,000 fine if they say anything about its operations. Its report also goes to the Minister for Health rather than directly to Parliament, so he can sit on it until a time when it’s unlikely to create the intense shame and embarrassment for the government that its contents normally would. The then Minister released the first report on 23rd December 2003; and the next one in March 2005; after which the Committee’s appointments were not renewed until July 2006.
Continue Reading July 8th, 2009
The Clinical Excellence Commission is pleased to release Quality of Healthcare in NSW: A Chartbook 2007. The Chartbook aims to make the NSW health system better and safer for patients.
It is designed to stimulate both discussion and action across the system that will lead to improvements in the quality and safety of health services. The Chartbook is not a scorecard, nor does not include information on adverse events, which are presented in detail in other CEC and NSW Health publications.
The CEC will produce The Chartbook annually as a quality improvement monitoring tool to monitor and respond to changes in key areas of safety and quality.
Continue Reading April 13th, 2009
WHEN judges hand out damages for the birth of a child, it is a sign that society is in trouble.
It suggests that some of us have become so self-obsessed that we have forgotten that the arrival of a new human being is a cause for celebration, not litigation.
Many parents - and would-be parents - will be angered by this decision. But it is really a cause for pity.
What sort of mother runs off to court because she has two children instead of one? And what sort of court believes it has the capacity to restore the supposed injury caused by the arrival of a child?
Lawyers and doctors should be very worried by this ruling. It suggests that the law of negligence is in deep trouble - at least in the ACT Court of Appeal.
Continue Reading April 13th, 2009
PHILIP DYKES
APHA NATIONAL CONGRESS
OCTOBER 1994
The question as to whether or not we are on the right track as we move towards changes in the private health-funding model implies that in recent time we had a choice. In most respects, I don’t believe we did, when you pause to consider the many factors which combined to put us where we are today.
…
So in conclusion, let me recapitulate. The continuing decline in the participation rate in private health insurance, combined with the upward spiral in drawing rates on the funds, gives us no choice but to accept a major change in funding, with or without Government encouragement.
The proposed casemix-based model outlined in the consensus document between hospitals and insurers is, in my opinion, a good start. A great deal remains to be done and I just hope we can preserve the goodwill which has developed so far between hospitals and insurers as we face the difficult task ahead in defining they many elements of the funding model which still need more precision.
A more equitable funding solution sounds great, but with a finite funding pool for every winner there will be a loser, and not all hospitals or even health funds will do better out of the new arrangement.
I’m sure we are on the right track, but we still have a long way to go, and some interesting and difficult times ahead.
Continue Reading April 13th, 2009
Australian Bureau of Statistics Report on Causes of Death in Australia
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3303.0?OpenDocument
Continue Reading March 18th, 2009
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