Federal Labor’s $2 billion National Health and Hospitals Reform Plan

The Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, and the Shadow Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon, have announced a Labor Government will undertake one of the most significant reforms of Australia’s health and hospital system since Federation.

Federal Labor will establish a $2 billion National Health Reform Plan over four years to improve Australia’s health system and ensure better health services for patients in hospitals.

Federal Labor’s National Health Reform Plan will have two central elements: $2 billion in investments to deliver improved health outcomes for patients in Australia’s health care and hospital system; and a commitment that a Rudd Labor Government will seek to take financial control of Australia’s 750 public hospitals if State and Territory Governments have not begun implementing an agreed National Health Reform Plan by mid-2009.

Goals for the plan are:

· Reducing preventable hospital admissions through greater emphasis on primary care by doctors, nurses and others outside hospitals;
· Improving management of chronic diseases such as diabetes;
· Reducing waiting times for elective surgery by increasing “capacity and throughput” – this is aimed at reducing delays for operations like hip replacement surgery which can mean public patients wait in pain for months;
. Fewer and shorter stays for frequent hospital users, particularly the elderly, by improving facilities for transition to outside hospital care;
· Increasing access to medical and specialist services.

Given the huge costs inherent in such enterprises, Mr Rudd is putting
much store on ending the state-federal blame game and duplication to
open a new era of collaborative efficiencies.