The health sector, both in Australia and internationally is increasingly being pushed to do more with less, provide for disparate populations and meet the increasingly complex needs of people who use our health systems. While the practice of patient centered care has been shown to benefit the...
"INTRODUCING COMPETITION AND INFORMED USER CHOICE INTO HUMAN SERVICES: IDENTIFYING SECTORS FOR REFORM"
Whilst CHF acknowledges that there is scope for improved efficiency in the delivery of health services we do not think that this preliminary findings report makes a convincing case for increasing competition and contestability delivering those efficiencies without detriment to consumers. Some of the benefits identified for consumers could and should be achieved by reforms within the existing market arrangements. After these have been implemented it would then be useful to revisit all three areas and see if there is still scope for additional benefits from increased competition.
Leanne Wells spoke at the 2016 Australian Self Medication Industry Conference on the topic of "Balancing innovation and evidence in self-management and self-care - a consumer perspective".
CHF welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback of the draft 5th edition Standards for General Practice Patient Feedback guide. We are pleased with the current state of the patient feedback guide and feel that the majority of the work in it respects consumers and will help practices best serve...
This is a re-launch of the Consumers Shaping Health e-newsletter we have been sending to stakeholders for some years. Now more people than ever will be receiving it as part of our aim to reach out to as many interested people as we can. The health consumer’s role is more important than ever with both clinicians and governments realising that healthcare works best when consumers have a central say about how it is designed and delivered. Many issues like Health Care Homes, health insurance, pharmacy, health literacy and quality and safety are crucial to consumers. Consumers Shaping Health will bring to you every two months news on what CHF and others are doing to ensure the consumers have impact in national health policy.
In September 2015, the Consumers Health Forum of Australia (CHF) was engaged by Primary Health Tasmania to undertake foundational work to scope the need for, and to support the potential establishment of, a healthcare consumer organisation (HCO) in Tasmania. Currently Tasmania is the only...
CHF is providing this submission in response to the First Report of the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) Principles and Rules Committee, and to add to our responses provided via the online survey about the First Report.
The need for and use of chaperones in the medical profession is a challenging issue for all concerned and one that CHF supports the investigation of. Due to the short timeframe in which submissions were called for we have not had time to consult our members explicitly on this submission. However...
CHF was pleased that one of the initial stated intentions in revising the Standards was to make them more consumer focused. However, we feel that this intent has not been realised in the current draft as a substantial number of the comments from our original submission and the consultation with healthcare consumers have not been taken into consideration.
This report includes a summary of findings and an appraisal of existing models used across the world to involve the public in heath technology assessment. It is intended to inform discussions of the Medicare Benefits Schedule Review Taskforce about the ‘improvement of our Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS)’ in order to ensure that it is ‘consistent with the latest clinical practice, or the best value healthcare’ . This report focusses on ways of improving the way the public are involved in the process of reviewing MBS Items.