Five things I’ve learned about healthcare in Australia over five years

Time to stop rushing for a moment and take some time to reflect. 5 years ago, my family and I arrived in Sydney on our Australian Adventure. We love Australia and are very proud to now all be citizens of this great nation. I’ve worked in the healthcare space for almost 20 years and I thought it was a good time to reflect on the 5 key things that my time in Australia so far has taught me:

1.      The same wicked problems in healthcare exist in Australia as they do in the UK, Europe and the US (and undoubtedly the rest of the world). I’ve written about waiting times in public hospitals before, but other problems include rising costs and patient expectations when set against shrinking budgets and a ballooning population over 60 years of age. The ethical and technical challenges associated with resource allocation in the public sector are still just as real. I have had just as many conversations about driving down length of stay, management of long stay patients and cultural barriers to change in Australia as I did in other geographies.

2.      The solution to a great number of healthcare’s problems lies outside hospital walls. We know that long hospital stays are expensive and that the longer a patient stays in hospital the more likely they are to the deconditioned and require even longer in hospital. The success of worldwide campaigns such as #endpjparalysis and #dressedisbest are testament to this. During my time here so far, I have led several workshops on reducing hospital readmissions and alternatives to hospital for patients with chronic diseases. I have also been the joint design authority for, and contributed to the facilitation of, two multi-day Innovation Showcase events for Primary Health Networks (PHNs) across Australia to help share ideas and solutions in the areas of commissioning, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, evaluating outcomes and shaping markets / managing providers.

3.      If you show people what good looks like then they’ll copy it and make it even better. It has been a privilege to be part of The Health Roundtable team for the last 6 years. The organisation provides enormous value to the Australian healthcare system by using data as a medium to start conversations between public hospitals on why differences in key metrics may exist. There is clearly no definitive right or wrong answer in many cases and the solution will go far beyond some initial data analysis but, by helping its members to collaborate, members can learn from each other’s solutions, which is very powerful. It was a real delight to see a team, who had attended a previous workshop and absorbed the ideas presented, return two years later with their own story on which they gave an excellent presentation as a keynote address for that event. Innovation generally comes from within, not from top down instruction.

4.      Australia is a world leading centre for healthcare innovation. There are more than 30 incubators and accelerators in Australia, a significant number of these providing a crucial role in the healthcare, medtech and pharma sectors. Did you know that the electronic pacemaker, the cochlear implant, CPAP mask, multifocal contact lenses and a vaccine for cervical cancer all have origins in Australia? More recently Australia has extensively used telehealth, hologram doctors and other remote service delivery models to make quality healthcare services available across such a vast continent (see point 5!)

[Source: https://maps-australia.com/australia-map-over-europe]

5.      The word ‘rural’ has a new definition … and it’s a definition that has caught me out! In my first year here I was greeted with much laughter after talking about a ‘rural’ hospital that was over 30 minutes from the nearest town and over an hour from the nearest motorway. However, having now visited ‘rural’ hospitals in country Western Australia, country South Australia and in the Northern Territory my points of comparison have been reset. The challenge of delivering healthcare to a population so spread out, along with incorporating the needs of very diverse Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations (who have lived in Australia long before the First Fleet arrived in 1788) is immense.

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts. Overall our future in Australia is bright, sunny and warm – here’s to the next 5 years! If you fancy catching up for a coffee then please do get in touch. I love to talk (anyone who knows me will tell you that!) Being in Sydney will help, but I also travel frequently interstate as well.

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Paul White -- Managing Director -- New High Consulting Pty Ltd

+61 415 867512

[email protected]

www.newhighconsulting.com