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Living Longer. Living Better.

Living Longer. Living Better – Better health care connections

Printable PDF version of Better health care connections (PDF 24 KB)

May 2012

Key Points:

The Government has undertaken significant reform of the health system to bolster primary care and preventative care services, with the aim of keeping older people out of hospital, helping people stay well in their community and ensuring the health and wellbeing of Australians as they age.

Building stronger connections between the health and aged care systems is a strong focus of the Government’s reform efforts. Many older Australians are in hospitals because they have nowhere else to go. A quarter of all aged care residents enter hospital every year. Approximately 30 per cent of these admissions could be avoided if a GP or other primary health care professional was available.

As part of the Living Longer Living Better aged care reform package, the Government will provide $80.2 million over five years to strengthen the interface between the health and aged care systems, including $58.5 million to promote better practice and partnerships and $21.7 million to support better palliative care and support in the aged care system.

The Government will provide $25 million over five years to support initiatives to encourage aged care providers to work with public and private health care providers and medical insurers to deliver short term, more intensive health care services. This will involve grants to develop innovative models of service, and will result in improved access to complex health care, including palliative and psycho-geriatric care.

Good, sound research into clinical and non-clinical aged care exists, but does not always translate into improving how care is delivered on the ground.
Funding of $19.4 million over five years will be provided to disseminate the findings of research across the aged care sector, and support its translation into actual improvements in care.

Many older Australians with complex health needs would benefit from increased access to multidisciplinary teams of health professionals to coordinate their care and treatment. The Government will provide $14.2 million over five years to support multidisciplinary care for clients of both residential and home care services, as well as to improve access to GPs through the use of video consultations.

More than one third of all deaths in our community occur in aged care homes, and aged care providers are becoming increasingly involved in the delivery of complex palliative care. The Government will provide $21.7 million over five years to improve palliative care for older people receiving services in their home or in residential aged care. This funding will be used to provide specialist palliative care and advance care planning advice to aged care providers and GPs caring for aged care recipients. It will also increase the funding allocated to the existing Program of Experience in the Palliative Approach to allow it to provide more training for aged care workers across Australia.

Implementation arrangements:

Funding for these projects will commence from 1 July 2012.

Building stronger connections between the health and aged care systems

The Government is delivering on its commitment to make aged care reform a second term priority, with a reform package that provides $3.7 billion over the next five years. This includes $80.2 million over five years to strengthen connections between the health and aged care sectors.

This funding is on top of current initiatives, which include:

• A telehealth initiative which provides incentives and Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) items for videoconferencing with specialists, including in aged care facilities.
• Initiatives under the National Health Reform Agreement to improve access to primary care for people in aged care.
• $1.6 billion through the National Partnership Agreement on Improving Public Hospital Services for the states and territories to deliver over 1,300 subacute care beds and community-based services over the period 2010-11 to 2013-14.
• $500 million provided to states and territories in 2009 under the National Partnership Agreement on Hospital and Health Workforce Reform to enhance the level of subacute care services by five per cent per annum or twenty per cent over the period 2009-10 to 2012-13.
• $180 million over the last 10 years for the Government’s National Palliative Care Program.

As part of the conversations on ageing held across Australia, the need for better access to health services was raised regularly, particularly for residents of aged care homes. Palliative care and advance care planning were frequently raised as key issues of concern, with consumers indicating they want improved access to palliative care across the spectrum of aged care services.

Further Information
For more information please visit: www.agedcareaustralia.gov.au