A sampling of some recent bits of health policy wisdom from around the traps – together with a stand-out para demonstrating why these documents are worth a read.
Health and medical research
The benefits of consumer input into health care policies and programs have become much more accepted across the health system over the past two decades. However, the role of consumers in health and medical research is much less established. The Consumers’ Health Forum of Australia articulates why this is so important in its well-researched and ably argued Submission and Supplementary Submission to the Strategic Review of Health and Medical Research in Australia. For some useful examples of how consumer input has delivered practical gains in research go to the supplementary submission.
The one paragraph snapshot:
Consumer involvement in research relates to an active relationship between consumers and researchers in the research process. Australian and international literature shows that such involvement can lead to research of greater quality and clinical relevance due to the unique perspective that consumers can bring to a research project. Increasingly, these results can be seen in the outcomes of Australian initiatives. Each of the projects described below [in the supplementary submission] show that involvement of consumers in all areas of research development, including setting research priorities and questions, designing protocols, collecting, analysing and interpreting data and disseminating findings can ensure that health research reflects consumer needs.
Rural health
There’s no shortage of important and engaging submissions to the Senate Community Affairs Inquiry into the supply of health services and medical practitioners in rural areas. However, the one that caught my eye was from Dr Rob Oswald, a GP working in solo practice seven hours by road from Adelaide provides the sort of grass-roots perspective of rural GP life that policy makers struggle to get from their high-rise offices in Canberra. Let’s hope his submission is on the reading list of all Senators and their advisers involved in this important Inquiry.
The one paragraph snapshot:
City hospitals also seem to think that we can’t do very much out here and so keep patients in Adelaide for treatment when they could come back and live in the comfort of their own homes. An example of this is quite a few chemotherapy patients could have some of their treatment in Streaky Bay and we have staff trained to provide this service but not many patients in fact return for this continuing care service. We also used to provide birthing services at our hospital, but are no longer allowed to do so unless an emergency presents itself even though we have more than enough midwives available.
US Health Reform
Angela Pratt’s recent piece in The Drum does a great job of making the complex Obama health reforms understandable to an Australian audience.
The one paragraph snapshot:
I was in the US earlier this year when the Supreme Court was hearing the case. On the subway in New York one day, I was reading the newspaper coverage of the hearings when a woman stepped into the train carriage, begging for money. She was begging because she suffered from MS and could not afford the medication she needed to treat and manage her condition. Because of the disabling nature of her condition, especially without the medication she needed but couldn’t afford, she was finding it hard to get a job. Because she didn’t have a job, she couldn’t get insurance. Because she couldn’t get insurance and didn’t have a job, she was struggling to properly look after her children.
Coalition Health Policies
Also from The Drum is this piece on Coalition health policy by Prue Power AM, Executive Director of the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association.
The one paragraph snapshot:
Instead of abolishing the reform architecture holus-bolus, the Coalition should state its commitment to the aims and objectives of the reforms – they are largely in sync with the Coalition’s policy after all – and review progress on implementation of these reforms if they are elected to form government, and make refinements to the structures and agencies now in place to ensure they are meeting the aims and objectives of the reforms where necessary after that.
Also worth checking out the lively discussion in the comments section on this piece, including this comment from Hairy Nosed Wombat:
Why do we have so little discussion of health care policy in this nation? There has been media coverage of US health care policy in the last year or two than on our own. Despite the fact that our system is clearly in crisis. Failures in delivery of health services are regularly killing people in this country, especially rural Australians.
Yet we don’t seem to want to talk about really fixing the problem. Or at least our journalists seem sadly completely disinterested. Have a chat to the average Australian, and particularly the average rural Australian, and they will tell you that provision of health care is right at the very top of the heap of their priorities at both a state and federal level. Sadly, I get the impression our journalists just find the topic too complicated and, well, boring, to be bothered really trying to analyse the issues and failings. Instead we get inane coverage of what are in the bigger picture, absolute political irrelevancies – sideshows if you like. There has probably been more political debate in this coverage in this nation on Julia Gillard’s bum than on our failing health care system. Have we really become that vacuous in this nation?
How about we start talking about the big stuff, the real stuff, again. Like fixing our health care system.
Disclaimer: Jennifer Doggett has undertaken consultancy work for both the Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Network and the Consumers’ Health Forum of Australia.
