The Rudd Government today announced major structural reforms to Australia's health and hospital system.
The Government will deliver better health services and better hospitals by establishing a National Health and Hospitals Network.
This new national network will be funded nationally and run locally.
These reforms represent the biggest changes to Australia's health and hospital system since the introduction of Medicare, and one of the most significant reforms to the federation in its history.
- A National Network: to bring together eight disparate State run systems with one set of tough national standards to drive and deliver better hospital services.
- Funded nationally: by taking the dominant funding role in the entire public hospital system the Australian Government will end the blame game, eliminate waste and shoulder the burden of funding to meet rapidly rising health costs.
- Run locally: through Local Hospital Networks bringing together small groups of hospitals, where local professionals with local knowledge are given the necessary powers to deliver hospital services to their community.
The Commonwealth will achieve these changes through the following actions:
- Taking 60 per cent of funding responsibility for public hospitals by investing one third of GST revenue - currently paid to the states and territories - directly in health and hospitals;
- Taking over responsibility for all GP and primary health care services;
- Establishing Local Hospital Networks run by health and financial professionals to be responsible for running their local hospitals, rather than central bureaucracies;
- Paying Local Hospital Networks directly for each hospital service they deliver, rather than just handing over block funding grants to the states; and
- Bringing fragmented health and hospital services together under a single National Health and Hospitals Network, through strong transparent national reporting.
These reforms will be put to the states and territories at the COAG meeting to be held in Canberra on 11 April.
If the states and territories will not agree to these reforms, we will take this reform plan to the people at the next election - along with a referendum by or at that same election to give the Australian Government all the power it needs to reform the health system.
The new National Health and Hospitals Network will end blame shifting and cost shifting, and provide national leadership on health and hospitals with increased local control.
Sweeping changes to the way hospitals are funded and run will also lead to less waste and duplication and a health system which is sustainable into the future.
On the basis of these reforms, over the coming weeks and months, the Government will announce critical additional investments to:
- train more doctors and nurses;
- increase the availability of hospital beds;
- improve GP services; and
- introduce personally-controlled electronic health records.
The establishment of the National Health and Hospitals Network builds on record investments in health and hospitals made by the Rudd Government over the last two years.