November 17, 2009 – 9:35 am
Health reform is in the wind but perhaps it won’t really make the difference that is being sought unless it acknowledges and addresses some hard truths about health care.
That is the suggestion of this very interesting piece below from Patrick Bolton, who has long and diverse experience in the industry. He has worked as a [...]
October 16, 2009 – 12:46 pm
The Productivity Commission yesterday released its draft discussion paper on the relative performance of public and private hospitals. Croakey has previously complained that the inquiry’s terms of reference seemed a tad narrow and made a submission to the Commission to this effect.
Well, the Australian Healthcare & Hospitals Association has had a read and gives the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Croakey has previously argued that the Productivity Commission inquiry into public and private hospital performance has overly narrow terms of reference.
Below you can read some more suggestions for the Commission from several Croakey contributors, but first have a look at how much further the debate on hospital performance has advanced in some other countries.
In the [...]
By Croakey
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Posted in Hospitals, Indigenous health, Media-related issues, adverse events, evidence-based issues, quality and safety of health care, rural and remote health, surgery
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Also tagged hospital performance, Indigenous health, patient safety, Productivity Commission, rural and remote health
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March 30, 2009 – 11:56 am
Dr Patrick Bolton, Vice President, Australian Healthcare & Hospitals Association, has some further interesting points to make on surgical safety:
“The recent study which showed that the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist reduced postoperative complications by an average of 36% and resulted in a fall in the total in-hospital death rate from 1.5% to 0.8% takes one [...]
March 30, 2009 – 11:17 am
Professor Guy Maddern, professor of surgery at the University of Adelaide, has sent in the following comment re previous posts on whether Australian hospitals should implement the WHO checklist to improve surgical safety:
“Surgery has over many years increased its range of checklists to help ensure patient safety and efficiency. Surgical instrument counts, pre-admission check lists [...]
