Towards One System: Key Insights from Canberra Healthcare Summit

Adelaide PHN was in attendance for the Towards One Healthcare System Summit in Canberra from 17 – 18 June.

The summit brought together key leaders from State and Federal Governments and agencies, hospitals, PHNs, primary, specialist and allied care provider groups, consumer health advocates, private health insurers and leading technology vendors.

The purpose was to examine what practical steps could be taken to better align current disparate policies, regulation, initiatives, technology and politics towards a framework that would facilitate our entire healthcare system operating more like it was one integrated system.

There were many big ideas that come out of the event across four domains.

Primary Care

• Moving towards blended funding models for primary care practitioners
• Changing the way doctors are trained
• Investing in prevention and community education

Funding and Governance

• Shift focus away from the states/commonwealth divide and find solutions within the current federated model
• In the next round of national reform agreement review, embed the principle that funding must continue to follow function even if location changes
• Improve ability to implement research into practice

Digital Health Culture

• Invest in digital connectivity
• Shift effort away from fixing and/or improving existing systems and consider building from scratch
• A mindset shift is required to recognise that with the increasing availability of technology that can improve patient experience and outcomes, there is an ethical obligation to use these tools that improve patient outcomes and experience

Private and Public Partnerships

• True partnerships should be symbiotic, not parasitic
• To achieve universality, there is a need to optimise private health insurance, providing a hybrid model for everyday people and keep the public system for complex, vulnerable people who need help but can’t afford private health insurance