Last week, Daryl Sadgrove, CEO of the Australasian College of Health Service Management, was tweet-reporting from an ACHSM conference in Tasmania.
In the tweet below, he quotes Michael Daly, secretary of the Department of Health in Tasmania.
In a postscript for Croakey readers, Sadgrove adds:
I believe that we should have a single funder, however I am less confident that it is ‘inevitable’ as Michael suggests.
Although most people assume this means a Commonwealth ‘takeover’, it could be state – honestly, I don’t mind.
All I know is our complex payment mechanisms are not driving improved value in the system.
We currently have local, state and federal funding, as well as a public/ private mix.
Cost shifting and blame game is still rife, despite Kevin Rudd’s aim to stop this with the proposed funding reforms.
However, there will be increased transparency, accountability and performance management from the reforms, so possibly this addresses some of the issues.
I believe the recent Commonwealth dental commitment, aged care funding reform, and commitment to accepting responsibility for ‘growth’ into the future all point to more funding responsibility moving to the Commonwealth. Interesting to see where this leads.
A timely point given the recent Queensland Government announcement that 2754 full time equivalents (or 4 per cent of the department’s staff) will be cut, with early reports that public health and health promotion will be particularly hard hit (see this ABC report for some of the reaction to date, and there will be more commentary at Croakey in days to come).
All of which prompted these comments from public health researcher Julie Leask, of the University of Sydney.
