7069SOH Healthcare Assignment Sample 2024
Introduction
The healthcare sector of Australia is highly complex in nature as there are many rules and regulations which need to be followed by the healthcare organisations in the coin trial and these laws are changing on a daily basis. However, the complexities in the healthcare sector of the country include challenges related to the resources planning in the sector and fruitful allocation of human resources across the healthcare sector.
In this report, the healthcare sector of Australia will be critically analysed and examined for providing certain recommendations for future improvement along with setting SMART objects and planning budget for implementing such changes.
Processes of decision making and priority setting in the healthcare sector of Australia
The decision making process in the healthcare sector of Australia involves many branches and laws are to be adhered to for ascertaining the outcomes of such decisions on the general public of the country. The Australian healthcare industry is largely dominated by private hospitals and health insurance companies which are striving to provide healthcare services to the patients across the country while governance of the private hospitals are controlled by the government authorities (Wilkinson & Dundon, 2021).
On the other hand, it may be stated that the funding requirements in the healthcare sector of the country is planned after scrutinizing the patients needs and areas of development in the whole sector thoroughly. Major areas of spending by the government may include development of hospital infrastructure, primary healthcare facilities, further medical research while planning future capital expenditures (AIHW. 2021).
A significant proportion of healthcare funding is provided by the Australian government, around 27% is funded by the respective state governments, followed by the health insurance companies, individuals and others. The regular inspection by the government authorities in various states results in the identification of the areas to be invested and improved and accordingly the decision to invest is undertaken by the federal government after rigorous discussion with healthcare experts (Johansson, Godlee & Moynihan, 2021).
The main system in this sector is termed as Medicare which includes three main parts such as medical services, public hospitals and medicines. However, it may be argued that priorities and decisions revolve around the few responsibilities of the government which are as follows:-
- Planning and implementing Medicare Benefits Schedules (MBS)
- Monitoring of Pharmaceutical Benefits Schedule (PBS)
- Regulations of private health insurance along with supporting these
- Monitoring and supporting of primary healthcare services to ensure superior effectiveness
- Ensuring advanced aged-care services such as residential and home care units
- Regulation of medicines and medical devices as per the guidelines of Therapeutic Good Administration (TGA)
- Funding of medical research for future advancement in the field of healthcare through Medical Research Future Fund
- The accurate collection of health related data combined with valuable statistics from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (Department of Health. 2021)
Apart from all these responsibilities, the priority setting is also conducted by the state level governments and local authorities as per the local needs of the people including children, women and aged population. Moreover, the main focus of the healthcare system in the country is providing affordable health care services to the citizens while maintaining the adequate number of doctors, nurses, medical professionals in respective hospital or healthcare units.
In addition to this, ensuring swift and safe food supply in the country along with protecting the environment from nuclear radiations along with other wastes are also coming under the decision making and priority setting of the government authorities (Department of Health. 2021).
Planning of workforce and development in the healthcare sector of Australia
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has 36 countries out of which Australia ranked 8th highest in terms of spending on healthcare relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the year 2020. The Australian government has regularly increased healthcare spending which may be evident from the fact that it has increased from 8.3% in the year 2000-01 to almost 10% in 2017-18 (AIHW. 2021).
Additionally, it may be stated that since spending in the healthcare sector has multiplied over the last few decades, the requirement of talented doctors, nurses and other medical staff have increased to meet the patients’ needs. The quality of healthcare workforce the country holds is significant to the quality of healthcare services the country provides to its citizens.
The regular training of the healthcare workers in various states has a positive impact on the growth of the sector and patient care is ensured to the fullest with the high quality medicines and constant government monitoring techniques (Macke & Genari, 2019).
According to the above figure, it may be critically mentioned that the Australian health care system consists of above 330,000 nurses and midwives, over 133,000 allied health professionals, around 98,000 medical practitioners along with over 20,000 dental practitioners. On the contrary, due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for healthcare professionals have increased dramatically and it resulted in over 16% increase in healthcare workers in the country since the year 2013 (AIHW. 2021).
During the impact of Covid-19 pandemic, all of the country’s healthcare workers had to adapt to the guidelines as issued by government authorities from time to time in order to maintain social distancing while caring the patients, being on the frontline in such emergency period in the country (Refer to Appendix 1).
Human resource and talent management in the healthcare sector of Australia
Australia is one of the pioneering countries in having a top class health system which is highly funded as per the annual budget of the government and the staff working in the sector is professionally talented and well rounded. The nurses and midwives in the country go through a rigorous training process as per the guidelines of the Department of Health, Australia, and get certified before starting practicing in the country (Baum, 2018).
The training process of the nurses may include 2 years of full time training from various institutes which contain specialised faculties who make the students aware of the duty of care involved in nursing responsibilities. The training and development of nurses may also include a 3 years Bachelors in Nursing degree course which is available in many universities as well as registered nurses going through practical training sessions to gain more in field knowledge.
However, most of the nursing and allied medical services training institutes are certified under Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA).
On the other hand, medicine and medical studies are crucial and highly challenging in the country as it involves several certifications to actually become a practitioner which increases the reliability of the overall healthcare system in the country.
Moreover, the medical practitioners have to undergo a 5-6 years of degree course under the affiliated universities and then undergo an internship for 1-2 years before practicing or obtaining valid licenses (Jackson, Roberts & McKay, 2019). It may be argued that there are several international medical programs attended by the Australian medical professionals in order to gain relevant knowledge in certain critical diseases such as HIV AIDS, Cancer and Covid-19 (Brand et al., 2021).
Oftentimes, these medical lectures and programs are organized by pharmaceutical companies in Australia or the Australian government in partnership with the World Health Organisation (WHO).
According to the above figure, it may be depicted that most General Practitioners (GPs) are concentrated in the eastern and western geographical locations of Australia and the workforce supply of medical professionals is significantly high in those areas. The GIRS stands for Geographically-adjusted Index of Relative Supply which is used to measure and evaluate the supply challenges faced by a particular region.
Areas with lower GIRS score have more health related challenges such as shortage of medical supplies or doctors or nurses. Moreover, the median waiting time for elective surgery has increased with reduced seen on time in emergency departments due to insufficient medical workforce supply (Refer to Appendix 2).
Although the numbers of public and private hospitals are 693 and 657 respectively, there is a gap in the workforce supply in the central parts of the country and the federal government needs to look after that by arranging sufficient amounts of medical supplies in central Australia (AIHW. 2021).
On a contradictory note, the human resource and talent management of the health sector depends on population dispersion, size of the land and proximity of the people to reach to service locations. The health system has to be arranged in such a way that areas with higher populations receive a high number of workforce supplies including medicines, nurses, medical practitioners and other medical allied services.
The average daily spends by the governments and generation of prescriptions in the central parts of the country has to increase in order to ensure swift workforce supplies in these areas (Refer to Appendix 3).
Recommendations for improvement in the healthcare system of Australia
SMART Objectives
| SMART Objectives | Actions to be taken | Departments or Agencies responsible | Resources required | Time |
| The specific objective is to be achieve higher rankings such as 1 to 5 among OECD countries in terms of healthcare | The Australian Department of Health has to take valid actions such as regulating the hospitals and medical agencies to ensure public safety. Spending of the annual budget on the healthcare sector has to increase substantially | Australian Department of Health | Over $200 billion | 2-3 years |
| The measurable objective may be increasing medical and healthcare spending in the country to above $200 billion in the year 2021-22 | Funding may be required from state as well as federal government and health insurance companies. The individuals may also fund such actions along with private hospital networks (Hay et al., 2017) | Federal government, state governments, local authorities, Health insurance companies and Individuals | Over $200 billion | 2-3 years |
| The achievable objectives may include equal distribution of workforce supplies across the country especially in the central region of Australia to increase overall GIRS score | Governments at state and national levels need to allocate the required number of expert medical practitioners or GPs, nurses and other medical allied services in areas with lower GIRS score to ensure adequate supply of medical workforce. Logistics and supply chain in medical supplies have to be aligned with national goals | Federal government, state governments and Australian Institute for Health and Welfare | Human resources such as nurses, doctors and other medical professionals | 2-3 years |
| The reasonable objective is to be provide affordable treatment in diseases such as Covid-19 and Cancer with increase in primary health networks | The primary health networks in Australia is currently standing at 31 which needs to be increased to at least 35 by the end of the year 2023 with the help of partnership among strategic partners | Federal government | Over $200 billion | 3-5 years |
| The timely objective is to gain patient confidence by implementing TGA, PBS and MBS more efficiently. | The guidelines of TGA has to be monitored by independent entities while reach of healthcare networks is to be increased by increasing government spending to generate more prescriptions under PBS and MBS | Federal government | Over $200 billion | 3-5 years |
Table 1: SMART objectives of Australian healthcare
(Source: Self-Created)
Strategic priorities, Options, Benefits and Costs
| Strategic priorities | Options | Benefits | Costs |
| To increase the seen on time presentation at emergency departments in the country while reducing the median waiting time for elective surgery | More and more doctors are to be allocated to different public and private hospitals and medical professionals should be provided with targets to visit emergency departments. The internal administration of the hospitals should monitor the reasons for high waiting time to solve the issues for patient satisfaction | Satisfied patients will gain faith in the public health system and average per capita spending on the health services will be decreased significantly. Better care will be received by patients | Over $20 billion |
| To enhance the care units of Covid-19 patients and sufficient availability of medical devices for efficient treatment process across all the states | Care units should be developed across the nation for emergency care and professional training should be provided | The impacts of pandemic will decrease accordingly while medical accuracy will be enhanced in treatment of other diseases such as Cancer and Diabetes due to emergency treatment experience (AISC Health. 2021) | Over $50 billion |
| To ensure there is swift flow of medical supplies in areas with lower GIRS score while increasing the reach of private health insurers for better coverage | Better training of nurses, medical allied professional as well as doctors and sufficient supplies of medical workforce should be maintained | Swift supply of workforce will benefit the health system as a whole as more doctors will be able to interact with patients and patients will get customised services from the nurses and others involved in patient care | Over $60 billion |
| To increase the number of public hospital beds per 1000 people within 5 years to 5 beds per 1000 people. Increasing the primary health networks from 31 to 35 with next 5 years (Refer to Appendix 4) | Increasing the number of public and private hospitals is an option while public private partnerships are also recommended. The government should also increase the healthcare spending (Heywood & Laurence, 2018) | The quality of treatment service will be enhanced significantly and patient recovery rate will increase. The quality of healthcare services will be improved in the end | Over $70 billion |
| Total costs | Over $200 billion | ||
Table 2: Strategic priorities, Options, Benefits and Costs of Australian healthcare
(Source: Self-Created)
Risk assessment
| Risk factors | Likelihood | Consequences | Mitigation strategies |
| Deterioration of international relations or increase in international trade tariffs | Highly unlikely | Highly harmful | Maintaining of foreign relations with the help of trade agreements and cooperation in health systems |
| Illicit use of drugs or medicines and corruption in healthcare units | Moderate | Harmful | Proper monitoring as per healthcare laws and administration |
| Data privacy risks including unofficial data leakage and disruptive staff behaviour | Highly likely | Highly harmful | Use of data protection technologies and regularly conducting information audit by professionals |
| Contaminated medical devices | Highly unlikely | Harmful | Frequent washing of devices and using new devices for new surgery |
| Rise in Covid-19 patients or lack of pandemic preparedness | Highly likely | Highly harmful | Training medical professionals and nurses for pandemic and spreading public awareness programs to maintain social distancing |
Table 3: Strategic priorities, Options, Benefits and Costs of Australian healthcare
(Source: Self-Created)
Conclusion
Finally, it may be concluded that human resource requirements in the healthcare sector of Australia is increasing regularly due to the impact of pandemic and other diseases while training of the workforce is utmost necessary to ensure proper patient care. The nurses in the country undergo special training to be involved in fruitful patient care as well as doctors are also properly trained.
The medical professional or practitioners undergo a full time degree course along with internship training to start practicing in the country. Regular workshops and lectures are attended by the doctors in order to specialise in various domains or treatment of a wide range of diseases and these workshops are conducted by the governments.
On the other hand, the sector faces several challenges in the workforce supplies arena as most of the central part of the country is facing a lack of medical supplies comparatively. The rise of Covid-19 has made the healthcare profession diversified in nature as they had to learn new techniques of patient care as per the regulatory guidelines.
The effectiveness of the data privacy in the system is crucial for protecting patients’ data along with hospitals’ internal data which may increase risk factors in the overall system. Moreover, due to the low spending on the healthcare system of the country, several areas of the country have scored a lower GIRS which indicates that there is limited flow of supplies in those areas.
Since the overall GIRS is low in most areas of Australia, the median waiting time for elective surgery is high comparatively to previous years and the seen on time in the emergency departments is low significantly. The federal and state governments have to collaborate for further improvement in the healthcare sector of the country along with public private partnerships which will be fruitful for any kind of improvements in the system.
The generation of prescriptions under PBS and MBS has to be increased with the help of spreading public awareness regarding these schemes while ensuring better coverage of patients under health insurance schemes. However, it may be stated that human resource and talent management in the country is expected to be impactful as the government is slowly increasing the annual spending of healthcare systems (Braithwaite et al., 2019).
References
AIHW. (2021). Retrieved 25 November 2021, from https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/australias-health-2018-in-brief/contents/how-do-we-use-health-care
AISC Health. (2021). Retrieved 25 November 2021, from https://nationalindustryinsights.aisc.net.au/industries/health
Baum, T. (2018). Sustainable human resource management as a driver in tourism policy and planning: a serious sin of omission?. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 26(6), 873-889.
Braithwaite, J., Zurynski, Y., Ludlow, K., Holt, J., Augustsson, H., & Campbell, M. (2019). Towards sustainable healthcare system performance in the 21st century in high-income countries: a protocol for a systematic review of the grey literature. BMJ open, 9(1), e025892.
Brand, G., Collins, J., Bedi, G., Bonnamy, J., Barbour, L., Ilangakoon, C., … & Schwerdtle, P. N. (2021). “I teach it because it is the biggest threat to health”: Integrating sustainable healthcare into health professions education. Medical Teacher, 43(3), 325-333.
Department of Health. (2021). Retrieved 25 November 2021, from https://www.health.gov.au/health-topics/nurses-and-midwives/support-and-education
Hay, M., Mercer, A. M., Lichtwark, I., Tran, S., Hodgson, W. C., Aretz, H. T., … & Gorman, D. (2017). Selecting for a sustainable workforce to meet the future healthcare needs of rural communities in Australia. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 22(2), 533-551.
Heywood, T., & Laurence, C. (2018). An overview of the general practice nurse workforce in Australia, 2012–15. Australian journal of primary health, 24(3), 227-232.
Jackson, K., Roberts, R., & McKay, R. (2019). Older people’s mental health in rural areas: converting policy into service development, service access and a sustainable workforce. Australian Journal of Rural Health, 27(4), 358-365.
Johansson, M., Godlee, F., & Moynihan, R. (2021). The Recovery—a podcast about action for sustainable healthcare. bmj, 375.
Macke, J., & Genari, D. (2019). Systematic literature review on sustainable human resource management. Journal of cleaner production, 208, 806-815.
Wilkinson, A., & Dundon, T. (Eds.). (2021). Contemporary human resource management: text and cases. SAGE.
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