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Pertinent Extracts from
A NEW APPROACH TO PRIMARY CARE FOR AUSTRALIA
which apply to
YELP
Community-level prevention and primary care is essential
to restoring universalism and efficiency in Australian
health care.
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a lack of
consumer input into primary care policy, planning, resource allocation and
service delivery
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Population health focus:
centres would be
responsible for managing the overall health of a population, rather than just
that of individuals, and would be funded to achieve population health outcomes.
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An insufficient focus on prevention:
our current
primary care system has only a minimal focus on prevention.
Given that funding
invested in preventive health saves more resources than health funding spent
elsewhere, this approach does not make economic sense.
Re-orienting primary care
to focus on prevention requires funding to be directed to preventive health
activities, such as immunisation, screening, early diagnosis services and
health
promotion.......... There are few resources available for GPs and other
primary care providers to work proactively to prevent the development of
obesity in
their community in the first place.
A better system would be one which provided more support and incentives for
primary care providers to work with consumers to prevent the development of
chronic conditions.
In order to re-focus primary care on preventive health,
funding needs to be provided for preventive health activities
and for the
measurement and monitoring of communities’ health status.
This could be achieved
by providing financial incentives for the
management of health outcomes in the catchment population of the centre
and for evidenced-based outreach and health promotion activities that will
promote population health outcomes within that community. " | |
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