Phil Johnston extracts below Sections re Preventive Health in:

New Directions for Australia’s Health - Delivering GP Super Clinics to local communities     August 2007

On top of this, failing to provide proper services for people with preventable chronic diseases also ultimately hurts our economy – with productive time lost from work.

Demand for health care for chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes is placing increasing pressure on acute services such as our public hospitals. Each year around 500,000 hospital admissions are for mostly preventable conditions that would have been better treated in the community.4

4 AIHW, Atlas of Avoidable Hospitalisations in Australia: ambulatory care-sensitive conditions, 2007. New Directions for Australia’s Health Australian Labor Party 6

The Productivity Commission also estimates that as many as 175,000 extra people could be in the workforce by 2030 and that implied expenditure savings could be around $2.8 billion if modest investments are made in improved Preventive health care.6

A Rudd Labor Government will shift Preventive health care from the margins to the centre of our country's health policy.

This means providing access to services on the ground, in response to local solutions developed by local communities.

Providing the facilities for multi-disciplinary teams to work together will mean a greater focus on prevention and management of chronic disease. This will also mean greater convenience for patients and increase the likelihood that patients will follow up with treatment, thus improving health outcomes.

Labor has already announced four key policies which will mean a greater focus on prevention under a Rudd Labor Government. Labor will:

• Establish a National Preventive Health Care Strategy to bring a true Preventive focus to the health system. The Preventive Health Care Strategy will be supported by a permanent expert Taskforce

• Establish new Preventive Health Care Partnerships with the states and territories, to work together on keeping people out of hospitals

• Establish a reform process to simplify Medicare rebates, shift the focus from six minute medicine, and provide incentives for GPs to practice quality, Preventive health care

• Commission the Treasury to produce a series of special reports assessing the impacts of chronic disease on the economy.

The hospital system is under pressure more generally. A recent AIHW report revealed that over 500,000 hospital admissions in just one year were the result of mostly preventable conditions that would have been better treated in the community.22

The State of Our Public Hospitals report showed that the most common reason for admission to a public hospital in 2005-06 was the need for renal dialysis. Renal dialysis is used to treat end-stage kidney disease, the most common cause of which is Type 2 diabetes – a largely preventable chronic disease.

In its recent submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee Report into health funding, The Blame Game, the Australian Medical Association noted that one of the weaknesses of our health system was its lack of focus on prevention:

In terms of health prevention, Australia has not made nearly enough progress with tobacco control, with control of elicit drugs or in addressing obesity and, as a result, many Australians in future will experience poor health outcomes including cancers mental illnesses and diabetes.23

This is why Labor has committed to a reform process to modernise and simplify Medicare. Labor's review of Medicare will focus on ways of providing incentives to GPs to practice quality Preventive health care, through longer consultations when appropriate, and through facilitating multi-disciplinary care through primary health care teams.

Preventive health care needs to be made more accessible to ordinary Australians struggling to find the time in their busy lives to look after their own health. We can’t expect people to take better care of their health if we won’t help provide the health services they need to make this a reality.

There is now international evidence to demonstrate that health systems focused on primary care and Preventive health care achieve better health outcomes, including lower death rates from chronic diseases like heart disease and cancer, and lower overall cost than health systems which are focused on acute hospital care.41