Best Healthcare In The World

Australia is considered by some to have one of the best healthcare systems in the world. But despite this status, Australia is still plagued by many of the same obstacles and challenges that most industrialized nations are facing.

Escalating healthcare costs, the rise of an aging population, increased incidence of chronic disease, and innovative but costly technology are tipping nations to a critical point of crisis and unsustainability.

According to Deloitte’s 2017 Global Health Care Outlook:

“Making Progress Against Persistent Challenges, many countries are exploring and implementing creative and cost-effective measures to lower these costs in order to not only maintain current levels of service but also to improve and move toward long-term sustainability. In response, a number of nations are looking at discrete cost-containment measures, such as leveraging private health plans to improve care provision (Latin America), reducing the burden on public systems (Western Europe), moving care to less expensive settings (North America) and diminishing dependence on consumer out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures (Asia, excluding Japan). Others are engaging in broad-scale transformation of their existing financial and care models.”

Looking Toward The Future

Australia has much to consider as it moves forward into the future. As the operating costs of the current healthcare system continue to rise, considerable work needs to be done to drive a health reform within the entire system.

Reducing heavy waste within the clinical and administrative segments as well as improving operational efficiency should be priorities. Perhaps as a nation, we can look outside of our borders for inspiration and seek solutions from the global network of countries that are facing similar challenges to our own.

Here are some cost-containment measures that we may want to consider:

• Consolidation of services within the hospital configuration (physician-hospital, hospital-hospital, and hospital-health care system) to improve economies of scale as well as the creation of larger health care organizations;
• Vertical integration and shifting of care from traditional settings to more cost-effective and diverse environments such as urgent care centers, clinics, community care, as well as online resources;
• Bulk procurement of hospital goods and services on both a regional or nation-wide level to lower operating costs as well as to gain greater negotiating power within the supply chain;
• The use of generic and biosimilar drugs in place of the more expensive brand-name products to substantially reduce pharmaceutical costs;
• The sharing of the same administrative and support services among health care organizations (ex. IT, human resources, finance);
• Implementation of technology-assisted service methods (ex. drug-dispensing robots, e-prescriptions, electronic medical records);
• Standardized patient care processes to improve patient safety, enhance efficiency among departments, and to better manage the quality of healthcare being delivered;
• Shift focus from disease treatment to wellness and preventative approaches to slow the rising demand for health services and to keep the population healthy and thriving.

Taking these ideas into consideration can go a long way in building the proper foundation for change and ensuring consistent and long-term delivery of effective and affordable universal healthcare for all Australians.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can improve healthcare here in Australia, in considering the options above and further industry trends download our whitepaper on “5 Driving Forces For Change In Healthcare.”