Rationalise aged care
Professor Brad Frankum from the Hospital Reform Group in NSW has called for the rationalisation of aged care, which currently has the Federal Government responsible for nursing homes and community care services but states in charge of hospital services.
“To get funding for aged-care services you have to go to some eight or nine different sources and report back to all these different arms of government,” Professor Frankum said in a report in The Australian.
“I get the feeling we spend more time sometimes reporting on what we are doing than actually doing it and this is very frustrating.”
He was commenting on Labor’s plans to rationalise the roles of federal and state governments in delivering health reform.
The Hospital Reform Group has called for a federal takeover of public hospitals, and Professor Frankum said that extra money would not be needed for the national health system. Existing funding levels would cover all needs provided they were spent more efficiently he said.
