At A Quick Look At The New Rudd Health Plan - We Need a Great Deal More Detail.

I have now had enough time to read through the new Health Plan.

All the details on what the Government is saying can be found here:

http://aushealthit.blogspot.com/2010/03/brave-new-health-system-for-australia.html

The major issues I see are (other than that it is clear they have not worked out what to do about e-Health yet) are as follows.

1. The planned public hospital networks, as discussed in the plan, seem to be too small to be really efficient or as clinically effective as one might hope.

2. The GP, Specialist interface does not seem to have been really addressed.

3. Activity Based Costing is quite complex and I doubt it can be implemented in the time-frames mentioned in the document.

However the biggie to me is the notional takeover of all GPs and Primary care. The gap in information on this really worries me. I wonder how the GPs feel about this and what it will mean for them?

This is a huge plan and we surely need a great deal more detail to understand how this is all meant to work.

After watching the 7:30 report this evening on ABC 1, is it also clear that until we see all the plans, it is essentially impossible to know where all the parts fit, and if the whole thing makes any sense. Hold the phone till then!

I have to say that this partially formed rather hospital centric, e-Health sparse plan, does not fill one with a great deal of confidence.

Again I fear the role of e-Health as an enabler of improvement and reform has not been properly incorporated into the plans we see.

David.