Communities

What does national health reform mean for the community?

All Australians – those who receive health or aged care services and those who deliver them, in the city or in the country – will benefit from national health reform.

National health reform will better connect health and aged care services, benefiting all Australians, no matter where they live.

National health reform provides more money, more beds, more local control and more transparency across our health and aged care system.

It will also mean less bureaucracy, less waste and less time waiting for treatment.

Australians will be able to make more informed choices about their health care because more information about these services will be available.

The establishment of Medicare Locals will drive improvements in primary health care by working to ensure that these services are tailored to meet the needs of local communities. Medicare Locals, working with Local Hospital Networks (LHNs) and the aged care sector, will facilitate better service integration assisting people who need to move between different types of care.

Medicare Locals and Local Hospital Networks will work together to:

• Develop innovative, local solutions to address the needs of their community;
• Improve links and referral pathways, and to promote consistency in forms and processes between service providers;
• Deliver better integration and smoother transitions for patients across the entire health system; and
• Give communities, and practitioners, a greater say in how their hospitals and health services are run and delivered.

This will make it is easier for people to move around the health system, so that they are treated in the most appropriate way; avoiding expensive hospital services when good primary health care or aged care services are what is needed.

Medicare Locals will also be involved in local planning and needs assessments, identifying gaps in service delivery in their local communities and working with health providers to fill these gaps.

National health reform will provide communities with a greater say in local health care service delivery and more access to information on their local health services.

The measurement of and public reporting on the accessibility, performance, quality and safety of our hospital and health care system is a key component of national health reform. This will enable Australians to make more informed choices about their health and aged care services, while ensuring the standard of care continues to improve.

The MyHospitals website now connects Australians to clear and accessible information on more than 900 hospitals, including 180 private hospitals. With a click of a mouse, an expectant mother living in any region of Australia can see if her local hospital has an obstetrics and maternity unit; a family from Sydney on holidays in rural New South Wales can check services at the hospital closest to their destination or an elderly man from rural Victoria needing to have a hip replacement can now compare the waiting times for this procedure at different hospitals close to where he lives.

The new National Health Performance Authority, once established, will develop and produce Hospital Performance Reports and Healthy Communities Reports.

Hospital Performance Reports will provide information on the performance of every Local Hospital Network and the hospitals within it. The reports will include service, financial and clinical performance information.

Healthy Communities Reports will monitor and report on access to health services (including access to GP services and out of hours GP care); the quality of service delivery, financial responsibility, patient outcomes and/or the patient experience in Medicare Local catchment areas.

Healthy Communities Reports will also provide contextual information about each local area, allowing comparisons with Australian averages.

Reporting on hospitals and communities at Medicare Local level will also cover:

• preventive health risk factors and other measures of community health and wellbeing;
• quality of service delivery, for example, the extent to which the health system is working in a coordinated way, which could be measured via avoidable hospitalisations.

A focus on prevention will assist individuals and their communities to remain healthy and by making it easier to see a doctor or health care provider when needed to take some of the burden off hospital and health services.

More doctors, nurses and trained allied health providers will also benefit communities making health care more accessible.

Find out more about what the changes mean for communities, families and older Australians