The Zap is a new column at Croakey – which launched last week – providing a weekly summary of health-related reports, announcements and media releases from Commonwealth government agencies, Health and Aged Care Ministers and other politicians, national health sector organisations, and some international bodies.
Below is the second edition, compiled by health policy analyst Charles Maskell-Knight.
Charles Maskell-Knight writes:
Last week may have been the third week in January, but most health advocacy and policy organisations still appeared to be on holiday. This is what those who were at work told us.
Ministers and government
Minister Mark Butler has been focusing on sex and drugs. He announced the launch of Beforeplay (“check your fun parts, before the fun starts”), a nine-week “awareness campaign to encourage young people to take action to prevent sexually transmissible infections (STI) by testing regularly and practising safe sex”. As well as bars, clubs and social media, material will appear on Tinder and Grindr.
Together with the Treasurer and acting Home Affairs Minister, Butler also announced a $188.5 million Australian Border Force (ABF) crackdown on the importation of illegal tobacco. It will be a “three-pronged approach” (clearly crying out to be codenamed Trident) involving stemming the flow of illicit tobacco to Australia; boosting ABF’s capacity to find it at the border; and “bringing together stakeholders to deliver a coordinated multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional response, across States and Territories”. I’m sure the third prong has organised criminals quivering in their boots.
Assistant Minister for Indigenous Health Senator Malarndirri McCarthy invited applications for the latest round of Supporting People with Cancer (SPWC) grants. Grassroots community organisations and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations working to improve outcomes for people affected by cancer can apply for grants of up to $120,000 by 29 February.
The grants aim to “enhance support for individuals affected by cancer by promoting equity in cancer outcomes and experiences”, with a focus on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and other priority population groups identified in the Australian Cancer Plan (ACP).
The need for the program was underlined by an article in the ANU Reporter on the Kulay Kalingka study, which “aims to address the systemic failure to understand the causes and contributors to cancer, participation in cancer screening and how treatment for cancer is experienced by Indigenous people and their families”. While the incidence of cancer among First Nations people is 14 percent higher than the rest of the population, the death rate from cancer is 45 percent higher.
Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly gave an interview to ABC News 24 about COVID-19 and reports of a wave of infections driven by the JN1 variant. Kelly’s message essentially was that there was nothing to see here. At the same time tweeter (Xer?) dbRaevn, who has done a sterling job compiling and reporting data on COVID-19 even as governments have lost interest, reported as at 12 January there were 459 aged care homes with an outbreak (up 46 on the previous week), with 2135 affected residents (up 342 on the previous week), and 32 deaths.
Aged Care Quality and Safety Commissioner Janet Anderson PSM responded to reports that aged care homes were failing the quality standards while still receiving three-star or better ratings. She told Australian Ageing Agenda that “the existence of non-compliance at a residential service does not reflect in that service’s star rating unless the commission uses its regulatory powers by issuing a sanction or other notice to direct a service to take suitable corrective action”. She went on to explain that the Commission factors in the provider’s “willingness and ability to remediate the identified non-compliance in a timely manner” in considering formal action.
What is the point of quality standards or star ratings if a provider can breach the standards and still receive a star rating indicating acceptable (or good, or excellent) quality care?
The AIHW released the most recent data on suicide and self-harm.
Consumer and public health groups
COTA Australia, in partnership with the Older Persons Advocacy Network and ten other older people and carer organisations, released a Preliminary Key Issues Paper in response to the exposure draft of the new Aged Care Act. The group acknowledged that some earlier feedback had been reflected in the draft, but concluded that “the exposure draft doesn’t go far enough to deliver choice and control, transparency, an effective complaints process and enforceability of rights”.
(Disclosure: I have taken part in some meetings of the group, but – like other members – do not necessarily agree in full with the collective position. My views on the exposure draft are in a series of articles published in Croakey – the first one here.)
The director of the Grattan Institute’s health program, Peter Breadon, contributed an article to Pearls and Irritations setting out the three changes needed to build a fairer health system:
- reducing the gaps in health risks between different communities
- redesigning funding for healthcare to reflect the risks that different patients face
- communities falling behind should be tackled with the same urgency as the problems that hit the headlines.
A version of the article has also been published at Croakey (incorporating some additional discussion of Health For All Policies versus Health in All Policies).
Trade unions
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) invokes the bogeyman of “US-style managed care” every time there is a suggestion health insurers’ role should extend beyond promptly paying doctors whatever they choose to charge. The Australian Physiotherapy Association (APA) is now asserting that there is a “dangerous shift to US-style health care” in NSW because SIRA, the NSW agency that regulates motor accident and workers compensation insurance, has decided to replace “physiotherapy” with “physical therapies” in its Low Back Pain Model of Care.
According to the APA, this will “allow NSW patients to be treated by non-AHPRA regulated and limited scope exercise providers” and “is a clear step towards ‘insurer-managed care’, in a model facetiously positioned as ‘Value Based Health Care’”. SIRA should be aware that hell hath no fury like a group of health providers fighting for their patch.
International organisations
The OECD published a report titled Fiscal Sustainability of Health Systems: How to Finance More Resilient Health Systems When Money Is Tight? It concluded that if countries could eliminate half of ineffective and wasteful health spending, average health expenditure as a share of GDP across the OECD would be only 10.6 percent in 2040, rather than 11.8 percent.
The World Health Organization released a report on global trends in prevalence of tobacco use 2000-2030, projecting that by 2020 the smoking rate among people aged 15 and over in Australia will have declined to under 10 percent. However, the report did not include projections of vape (electronic nicotine delivery systems, or ENDS) usage.
• Have we missed anything? Let Charles Maskell-Knight know using ‘The Zap’ in the subject line: info@croakey.org
Charles Maskell-Knight PSM was a senior public servant in the Commonwealth Department of Health for over 25 years before retiring in 2021. He worked as a senior adviser to the Aged Care Royal Commission in 2019-20. He is a member of Croakey Health Media; we thank and acknowledge him for providing this column as a probono service to our readers. Follow on X/Twitter at @CharlesAndrewMK.
