Better health and ageing for all Australians

Media Releases and Communiques

Health Ministers agree to continue reform agenda

Australian Health Ministers met with clinicians today at their meeting in Hobart to seek advice about the progress of the Health Reform Agenda and the future priorities for reform.

In this section:

29 July 2004

Joint Communique

Health Ministers agree to continue reform agenda

Australian Health Ministers met with clinicians today at their meeting in Hobart to seek advice about the progress of the Health Reform Agenda and the future priorities for reform.

Clinicians asked Ministers to consider three major issues:

  1. The need to integrate and coordinate services at the interface between community based and hospital based services

  2. The need to increase the Australian community's access to healthier outcomes. Examples of groups whose access needed improvement included children, people with chronic care needs, older Australians and indigenous Australians

  3. The need for a sustainable, skilled and flexible workforce to provide services for the future
Ministers noted that each of these issues is included in their current reform agenda.

Ministers agreed with clinicians that child health and wellbeing should be endorsed as a specific area for reform

Clinicians suggested to Ministers that reform is a practical issue and that a way to progress these issues would be to trial in each state and territory specific services that integrate community based services and hospital based services. Trials of integrated primary care services, coordinated chronic care and trials that integrate aged care were suggested.

Ministers welcomed the clinicians input into their health reform agenda discussions and agreed to explore mechanisms to engage clinicians in the development of the national reform agenda, noting that some activities under the reform agenda are already undertaken with advice from a clinical reference group.

Ministers also endorsed a number of specific actions aimed at making practical progress on the health reform agenda.

Quality and Safety

Once again, safety and quality has been a priority area for reform. Health Ministers reaffirmed their strong commitment to improving the safety and quality of health care, and agreed that the Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Healthcare's Annual Report and accompanying stand-alone reports be released publicly.

Ministers reaffirmed their commitment to progress key quality initiatives, including the national open disclosure standard; the development of a minimum data-set for safety and quality; and periodic external review of those hospital systems that support the delivery of safe, high quality health care.

Ministers agreed that an implementation plan, including a report on ways to resolve any outstanding issues, be developed for these initiatives by AHMAC for consideration for endorsement at AHMC's meeting in November 2004.

Information Technology

Underpinning improvements in patient safety and quality of care is information and connected information systems. Health Ministers today reaffirmed the importance of information management and information and communications technology (IM&ICT) to longer-term reform of health care delivery.

Ministers endorsed the immediate establishment of transition arrangements to drive the national IM&ICT priorities over the next 12 months. $9.5 million has been allocated to fund these arrangements. Ministers also endorsed the formation of a national entity to enable delivery of critical national IM&ICT priorities. The implementation of a national system of patient identification will also be examined under this work program and include stakeholder consultation and ways to ensure protection of privacy.

The Chair of the Australian Health Ministers' Conference, Tasmanian Health Minister, David Llewellyn. said that such a system has the potential to improve patient care through more timely and accurate identification of individuals, and reduce administrative costs associated with re-entering data about individuals.

Care of Older Australians

In caring for Older Australians better and preventing avoidable hospital admissions, Health Ministers agreed to a National Action Plan and made a commitment to implement a number of priority actions over the next four years. These include actions:
  • introducing interventions in 2004 that target the specific care needs of older people at the point of access to the hospital to prevent avoidable hospital admissions;

  • releasing a best practice assessment guide for older people in a hospital setting, guidelines to minimise functional decline, and care pathways for stroke by June 2005;

  • agreeing to workforce roles, tasks and competencies required to successfully deliver effective care to older people by 2006;

  • operationalising the 2,000 transition care places and releasing guidelines and care pathways on delirium by 2007; and

  • meeting defined levels of sub acute services (inpatient and ambulatory) and other specialised health services for older people by 2008, and operationalising residential aged care places to meet new national benchmarks by 2008.

Workforce

Health Ministers endorsed a National Health Workforce Action Plan to guide national health workforce policy and planning. This confirms the priority recently afforded to workforce issues by the Council of Australian Governments.

Call Centres

Ministers noted the progress that has been made on developing practical models for the development and operation of a possible national health call centre network.
Ministers agreed that the National Call Centre Network has the potential to contribute to improved after hour access to care and agreed that further work is needed to assess experience to date before deciding to adopt any particular model and associated implementation plan.

Ministers accepted the Australian Government's offer to fund an urgent study, to include consultation with stakeholders, of the cost, clinical effectiveness and broader impacts of existing Australian and overseas health call centres in order to inform future decision making.

Oral Health

Minister endorsed the National Oral Health Plan and specifically endorsed fluoridation of water supply as an effective public health measure and agreed to take the Plan into account in the development of oral health services in their jurisdictions.

"Our program of reform will constantly evolve as we implement changes and as new issues come to the fore. Our discussions with clinicians today confirmed that we are on the right track with our reform, but there is still more we can do." Minister Llewellyn said.

"Jurisdictions will continue to implement the reforms we have already agreed but want to do more to improve our health system More specific proposals for reform will be discussed further at our next meeting."

Ministers will also announce further progress on chronic disease, remote area renal services, pharmaceutical reform, increasing organ donation and legislation to respect the wishes of organ donors, and ways in which General Practitioners can work with Emergency Departments to improve service outcomes later this year.

Media Contact: Stewart Prins, Minister Llewellyn's office, 0419 339 262
Kay McNiece, AHMC Secretariat 0412 132 585