October 1, 2009 – 6:42 pm
Apologies if I’m starting to sound like a one-track record here, but what on earth do Rudd and Roxon think they’re doing with their health reform consultation bandwagon?
Maybe I’ve missed something but I thought that one of the few areas that just about everyone with an interest in health reform agrees upon is the need [...]
September 30, 2009 – 12:04 pm
Health reform is generating much activity and interest right around the world. What can we learn from the experiences overseas?
Dr Mary Haines, Editor of the Hospital Alliance for Research Collaboration (HARC) eBulletin, has been investigating the lessons from the UK.
She has filed this report, based on the latest HARC eBulletin, released today:
“For those unconvinced about [...]
September 30, 2009 – 11:50 am
How do we know if our general practice/hospital/dentist/aged care service is providing safe and quality care? At the moment, it’s almost impossible to answer this question in any objective manner.
But at least we now have some idea of what sort of questions we should be asking, thanks to a report released this week by [...]
September 17, 2009 – 2:11 pm
Drew Dawson, one of the gurus of sleep research, has written a long and informative piece for Crikey today about the issue of long working hours, fatigue and health service safety.
Dawson contributed to the fatigue risk management guidelines which recently caused Queensland Health some media grief, and today he’s taken us well beyond those [...]
September 10, 2009 – 8:47 am
The Productivity Commission plans to release its draft report on the relative performance of public and private hospitals next month, with the final report due with the Government on December 4.
It will be the subject of much discussion at the “Hospital Performance Measurement summit”, to be held in Sydney on December 10-11, and the conference [...]
August 26, 2009 – 10:54 am
Some time ago, an editor with long experience in the medical publishing industry and I were dreaming about creating a new type of health publication that wouldn’t take the narrow focus of so many of the existing professional publications.
It’s not surprising, of course, that magazines like Australian Doctor, Medical Observer or the latter’s new Practice [...]
August 25, 2009 – 9:06 am
The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission’s final report made numerous recommendations, many of which require a great deal more work before they could be considered ready for implementation. It seems unlikely that changes will happen quickly.
However, Professor Ian Olver, CEO of Cancer Council Australia, has a few suggestions for reforms that could be [...]
August 19, 2009 – 12:23 pm
Health policy analyst Dr Lesley Russell has written an indepth analysis of the state of health reform in the US for the online publication, Inside Story.
In this piece for Croakey she writes about the lessons from the US in using financial incentives to improve hospital care:
“As Australia looks to improve the quality of health care [...]
What will happen to the quality of care that patients receive if governments become fixated on “efficient costs” for hospital care? And what does “efficient cost” – a term that crops up repeatedly in the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report – actually mean?
Gavin Mooney, Honorary Professor, University of Sydney, has been investigating [...]
How ironic.
The Prime Minister launches the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report stressing the need to boost primary care. And then what does he do? Takes off, with Minister Roxon, on a tour of teaching hospitals. The impact will be to once again focus public attention and debate upon hospitals. You can bet the [...]
