Primary Health System Failing People with Chronic Conditions

Simple reforms to Australia’s health system could save more than $320 million a year in avoidable hospital admissions and provide better care for people with chronic conditions.

According to a new Grattan Institute report Building Better Foundations for Primary Care by Stephen Duckett and Hal Swerissen, our primary health system is failing in the prevention and management of chronic disease—the heaviest burden on the system.

Despite the government spending more than $1 billion a year on planning, coordinating and reviewing chronic disease management, many people with chronic conditions do not receive the best care and end up having hospital stays that could have been avoided—a situation all too common among people with chronic pain.

The report proposes one way to improve this situation is to change Medicare’s fee-for-service payment system for one-off visits to GPs in favour of payments for integrated, long-term care of patients with chronic conditions.

This is consistent with Painaustralia’s submissions to Government and the view of other key health organisations, in order to support a best-practice multidisciplinary approach to chronic disease management.

Another proposal is to require GPs to provide more data on patients: why they visit a doctor and what advice and treatment they get. This would be used to compare the performance of GPs and enable the development of payment systems to reward improved patient management.