2.3: Acute Care

The 1997-1998 Portfolio Budget Statements, informs Senators and Members of Parliament of the proposed allocation of resources to portfolios outcomes and their objectives and targets including the agencies within the Health and Family Services portfolio.

In this section:

Budget Measures

Objective

To support access to high quality acute health care services for all Australians.

Priority outcomes

Improved access to, and outcomes from, public hospital services for public patients, through continued improvement in the efficiency and effectiveness of the public system.
Improvement in balance of demand for private hospital and public hospital facilities through stabilisation of private health insurance participation rates.
Improved quality of care and health outcomes in the acute health care system.
Improved structural relationships of Commonwealth, State and Territories health services to allow more flexibility in service provision and funding arrangements and a stronger consumer focus to improve effectiveness and efficiency.
Better control over the supply and distribution of the medical workforce.
Improved access to quality health care for people living in rural and remote areas through measures to support the rural workforce.

Strategies

Provide funding to the States and Territories (and others) to allow access for public patients in public hospitals and to improve the operation of public hospitals and related services.
Develop and apply a regulatory regime under the National Health Act to ensure that private health insurance provides efficient and affordable access to hospital services within the framework of community rating.
From 1 July 1997, provide payments to persons and families with relatively moderate income to encourage them to remain in or join private health insurance.
Gather and analyse data concerning the operations of the acute care system including the continuing development of casemix measures.
Contribute to policy on medical workforce supply.
Stimulate and promote microeconomic reform in the hospital system.
Develop quality of care and health outcome indicators for application at the national and local level and enhance the collection of nationally consistent data and reporting arrangements.
Improve access to quality health care for people living in rural and remote areas through measures to support the rural workforce.
Work with the medical profession, universities, States and Territories to develop national arrangements for more flexible training and dispersal of the Australian medical workforce.
Support measures to improve access to high quality health care for rural and remote communities by encourageing innovative approaches to health care delivery and workforce support.

Performance assessment: indicators and targets

Effectiveness

Indicator	Target	Information source and reporting frequency
Private health insurance participation rate (Priority Outcome 2; Strategy 3)	Arrest the decline	Private Health Insurance Advisory Committee Quarterly reports
Number of States and Territories which meet agreed targets for levels of admitted and non-admitted public patient activity, and waiting times for elective surgery and emergency department services (Priority Outcome 1; Strategy 1)	All States and Territories achieve agreed performance targets	Quarterly State and Territory reports Annual hospital activity data
More extensive resources to support training of rural health workforce (Priority Outcome 6; Strategies 5, 9,10)	Two additional University Departments of Rural Health established during 1997-98 Increased numbers of surgeons and physicians undertaking at least some of their specialist training in rural areas	Not applicable Reports from Medical Training Review Panel and the relevant medical specialist colleges
New acute health financing agreements (Priority Outcome 4; Strategy 3)	Achievement of an effective Commonwealth-State agreement to come into operation on 1 July 1998	Not applicable

Quality

Indicator	Target	Information source and reporting frequency
Collaboration between the Commonwealth, States, Territories, industry and key stakeholders on the development, testing and implementation of quality and outcome improvement strategies in the areas of performance information for acute care; information technology; clinical practice guidelines; consumer focus; accreditation; and health service reform (Priority Outcome 3; Strategies 6, 7)	Collaborative progress in each of the above areas	Reports from projects undertaken as part of the collaboration
Agreement between the Commonwealth, States and Territories on a set of quality of care and health outcome indicators, and on collection of data for these indicators (Priority Outcome 3; Strategy 7)	Timely agreement on indicators	Agreed indicators will be reported in the National Health Ministers' Benchmarking Working Group's report on Health Sector Performance Indicators, the Health Service Standards Report (from 1998) and the Productivity Commission's Report on Commonwealth and State Government Service Provision
Satisfaction with private health insurance products and services (Priority Outcome 2; Strategy 2)	Improvement in satisfaction rate and reduction in complaints	Private Health Insurance Complaints Commission Annual Reports
Implementation of the Australian Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) classification system in Australian Hospitals (Priority Outcomes 1, 4; Strategy 4)	Purchases of the licence for the Australian DRG classification to increase from 700 to 740 licences, and or all hospitals with greater than 50 beds, by June 1998	Licensing agreements
Accessibility of palliative care, especially in rural and remote areas (Priority Outcomes 1, 6; Strategy 8)	Progress towards palliative care accessible to a majority of the population including in rural and remote communities Specifically in 1997-98 define more precisely gaps in current arrangements	Minimum data set under development in 1997-98

Equity

Indicator	Target	Information source and reporting frequency
Agreement between the Commonwealth, States and Territories on data items relating to quality of care and health outcomes (eg access to health care) of targeted groups including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and those living in rural and remote communities (Priority Outcome 1, 3 ; Strategy 8)	Agreement on comparative indicators for targeted groups	Data sources to be developed

Performance assessment: evaluation

Palliative Care: In consultation with States, Territories, service providers and consumers, review the arrangements for the provision and funding of palliative care in Australia. The review recommendations will be considered by Health Ministers in February 1998 in the context of the new Medicare Agreements.

How the program is resourced: reconciliation of appropriations to the program and summary of portfolio outlays (Excel 73 KB)

Variations to Program Outlays 1996-97 to 1997-98 (Excel 31 KB)