Just listening to ABC's PM.
It seems the last roll of the dice is more funding for elective surgery ($600M over 4 years).
It will fund 90,000 surgeries over 4 years.
No money if the States do not sign on!
This is apparently the last offer for the COAG Meeting to be held on April 16, 2010.
The Premiers are chatting over the phone tonight to consider the final offer.
Mental Health and e-Health are totally left out it would seem.
Sad news and a reflection that NEHTA / DoHA can't put any convincing case for e-Health to Government.
Just pathetic!
David.
7 comments:
I'd wait to see what comes out of COAG next week before wrist slitting - but if it does neglect e-health then there will be a fundamental credibility problem for Rudd that will just get bigger and bigger come election time.
All the media needs do is compare the Obama administrations' investments in technology modernisation, or compare efforts in scandinavia and other european countries - the timidity of what would be on offer would soon become apparent. None of the big productivity gains needed over the next 2 decades are possible without e-health. End of story.
This is why I remain hopeful that COAG will actually agree to this long standing agenda item, which predates the current reform proposals, and should be funded by the states as well as the feds. Fingers crossed.
And your evidence to continue to hope is?
The report on PM made it pretty clear this was the last sweetner for the Premiers.
I agree that we shall see however - but I am not holding breath at this point!
David.
I have a sneaky suspicion some funds for ehealth might be getting through in modest amounts via Nehta to a few software developers to facilitate the introduction of some essential clinical functionality needed to implement a standardised system of Primary Health Care Organisations (PHCOs)under the Rudd plan.Only a sneaky suspicion - nothing more.
Without ehealth the cost of future healthcare will of course go up. Paying for 90,000 operations is yet another political ploy to ensure that the government is seen at throwing more money at the health problem in an attempt to persuade the public that 'he who spends most cares most'. As everyone here knows we need to build for the future and prevent as much of those 90,000 operations from happening as possible... ehealth will go a long way in doing that. What on earth is wrong in setting prevention targets (and cost saving targets) rather than throwing money around?
Let's not just remove the states from health, let's remove all of government. How about that for an idea?
Tuesday, April 13, 2010 8:02:00 AM said "let's remove all of government" from health.
What! You mean no bureaucrats, no supervision, no policy, no legislation, no taxpayers' funds being collected! You must be crazy or brilliant. Surely you have some rationale behind your suggestion - do you?
It looks to me as though you are advocating a free for all health system. Even with a Health Commission it needs to be legislated for and funded by someone.
I hesitate to suggest your idea is stupid without knowing what is behind what you are proposing. Perhaps you will share your enlightenment with us.
If e-health gets ignored then there is a big stinking election issue that will come up - which is the money that has gone into NEHTA and what has come out (or not) on the other side. The case for NEHTA only make sense if it leads to a national investment in the IEHR and other e-health services. People will ignore (largely) the NEHTA mess if we get on with it. But prepare for some tough investigative journalism into the latest 'pink batts' money waster called NEHTA if NEHTA has been unable to get us to square 1 on the agenda. And some cheap primary care integration will not cut the mustard!.
“Tough investigative journalism into the latest 'pink batts' money waster called NEHTA” forget it. There has been plenty of that already and so what. If it gets too hot closer to the election another enquiry with a conveniently time Interim Report will be launched to buy time. The closer we get to the election the easier it becomes to shift the timing of the Interim Report to well after the election.
To help defuse the issues or divert unwanted attention from NEHTA there will be plenty of talk about consumer involvement in Primary Health Care Organisations (PHCOs) perhaps through some kind of advisory or local consultative or even ‘Board of Governance’ involvement. At the moment we have no idea what Rudd has in mind. But one thing is sure the General Practice Networks, or Divisions as we used to call them, will undergo a major restructuring.
Somewhere up the top of the AGPN a few movers and shakers know exactly what is being planned. Whether it has filtered further down to involve the state based organisations is a moot point and if it has it would probably only be to one or two of them.
Rationalising the number of GPNs through mergers to about 60 has been under discussion for a long time. But that has just been no more than a softening up process to get us all thinking along the right lines. It is probably more likely that we will see the number of GPNs being reduced by 65% to 70% bringing the total number down to around 35 to 40 and then renamed PHCOs - established to serve populations of between 100,000 to 250,000 people linked through the PHCO to Rudd’s Local Hospital Networks. To bring that about one of the highest priorities must be to consolidate the ICT infrastructure of those being ‘merged’. It would be stupid to do otherwise.
As the Prime Minister and Minister for Health said in their joint media release Brisbane 12 April “Primary Health Care organisations will: …. work closely with Local Hospital Networks to make sure that our hospital system and GP and primary care system work together seamlessly;” and Primary Health Care Organisations will be built from the existing network of Divisions of GPs so that they don’t create additional bureaucracy.”
That said I have to agree with your commentator of Monday, April 12, 2010 10:15:00 PM . As for what the medical bodies like the AMA, RACGP, RDAA, AGPN are thinking right now is anyone’s guess but they will be thinking - real hard.
Post a Comment