A healthy COAGulation

Ignore the usual who got what, at the latest meeting of Australia’s political leaders in Adelaide.

The real story, from that meeting, is that Federal State account books were cleared.

And that should lead to real improvements, in some dark places, in future.

Things have been so grim at Australia’s hospitals, for example, that staff at some routinely cooked the books, to make outcomes look better than they actually were.

And that was while the situation at some country hospitals, in particular, were very bad indeed.

As one regular visitor to Australia’s hospitals put it:”Never go to a country hospital.”

So what has changed?

Perhaps the most important change is that health funding will be consolidated into one broad channel.

And new performance standards will be set.

And as those standards will be administered externally, failures should be much harder to disguise than they are now.

As the communique issued after the meeting of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) explained, this will be done under a new health care agreement.

“COAG also agreed that in developing the new health care agreement there would be a review of the indexation formulas for the years ahead,” it said.

“COAG also agreed that the new Australian Health Agreement should move to a proper long-term share of Commonwealth funding for the public hospital system.

COAG agreed that the new health care agreement would be signed in December 2008 with a commencement date for the new funding arrangements of 1 July 2009.

“COAG also agreed for jurisdictions, as appropriate, to move to a more nationally-consistent approach to activity based funding for services provided in public hospitals.”

But, it said, this would be “one which also reflects the Community Service Obligations required for the maintenance of small and regional hospital services.”

“COAG also agreed to the introduction of a national registration and accreditation system for health professionals and steps to address health workforce skills shortages,” the communique said.