A Healthier Future for all Australians - Final Report June 2009
2.3 Painting the picture – overview of our reforms
In our Interim Report, our proposals for change were crafted as ‘reform directions’. This allowed consultation and valuable feedback on our proposals. As a result of this feedback, some of these proposals have been refined, some have stayed the same, and we have developed additional proposals in other areas.
Accordingly, our Final Report now includes 123 recommendations which comprise a long-term health reform plan, designed to achieve better health for all Australians and improve the performance of the health system. The complete listing of these recommendations is included at the end of our Executive Summary.
Table 2.2 provides an overview of our major recommendations for reform, grouped under the reform goals we described earlier. These are now described in more detail in Chapters 3–5.
Table 2.2: Overview of reform goals and actions
Tackling major access and equity issues that affect people now
- Refreshing our paradigm of universality
- Acting now to improve equity in access and outcomes for people
- Universal basic dental health services
- Timely access to quality care in public hospitals
- Crisis mental health services
- Closing the gap for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health
- Delivering better outcomes for people in remote and rural areas
- Committing to ongoing improvements in access - National Access Targets
Redesigning our health system to meet emerging challenges
- Embedding prevention and early intervention
- A new Australian Health Promotion and Prevention Agency
- Healthy Australia Goals 2020 - everyone taking responsibility for health
- Shifting the curve of health spending towards prevention
- Building prevention and early intervention into our health system
- A healthy start to life for all Australian children
- Encouraging good mental health in our young people
- Connecting and integrating health and aged care services for people over their lives
- Primary health care as the cornerstone of our future health system
- Investing in comprehensive primary health care
- A 'health care home' for people with chronic and complex needs
- Creating 'hospitals of the future' and expanding specialty services in the community
- Connecting care and support for people with mental illness
- Investing in rehabilitation and recovery through sub-acute care
- Improving access to palliative care services
- Increasing choice in aged care
- Evolving Medicare - beyond a Medicare Benefits Schedule
- Bringing together state-funded health services and MBS services
- Reviewing the scope of services under Medicare
- Ensuring affordability through better safety nets
- Reshaping the Medicare Benefits Schedule
Creating an agile and self-improving health system
- Strengthened consumer engagement and voice
- Healthy Australia Goals 2020
- Building health literacy
- Fostering genuine community participation
- Empowering consumers to make fully informed decisions
- Supporting carers
- A modern, learning and supported health workforce
- Valuing and harnessing the expertise of our health workforce
- Fostering clinical leadership and governance
- Taking a national approach to planning and training a modern health workforce
- Creating an education and training framework that evolves to meet changing health needs
- Investing in training infrastructure across health service settings
- Smart use of data, information and communication
- Person-controlled electronic health record - giving people ownership of their health information
- Enabling an e-health environment
- Using information to promote better health outcomes and healthy communities
- Promoting a culture of improvement through health performance reporting
- Well-designed funding and strategic purchasing models
- Fostering quality, collaborative care through funding
- Funding to better respond to people's care needs over time
- Driving efficiency and outcomes based purchasing
- Knowledge-led continuous improvement, innovation and research
- Providing national leadership on quality care and knowledge management
- Translating evolving knowledge into clinical practice
- Enabling innovation and research system-wide
