Skip to content
Medical Health Aged Care

Health reform report welcome, but primary care must remain focus for future investment and reform

Royal Australian College of GPs 4 mins read
  • Media:

The Royal Australian College of GPs (RACGP) has welcomed the final report of the Mid-Term Review of the National Health Reform Agreement (NHRA) Addendum 2020-2025, but warned the Government against compromising quality care.

The NHRA is an agreement between the Federal Government and all state and territory governments to improve health outcomes by coordinating care and ensuring the future sustainability of Australia’s health system. It forms the basis for federal funding contributions to states and territories for public hospitals and provides mechanisms to improve coordination between general practice, hospitals, and other parts of the health system.

In its submission, the RACGP advocated for a range of measures that would cut red tape for patients and GPs and reduce the burden on overloaded hospitals through investment in care by GPs.

RACGP President Dr Nicole Higgins said the College welcomes the report’s acknowledgement of flaws in the current NHRA around health system fragmentation, bureaucratic barriers to care, and a lack of focus on preventive care.

“Australia needs a holistic health system the recognises the interdependency between general practice, hospitals and allied health services,” Dr Higgins said.

“While the NHRA aspired to that, it hasn’t occurred in practice. We need an approach that has the flexibility to adapt to local needs, but there must be a shared vision, clear roles for different parts of the system and easy exchange of information between them, and clear accountabilities. Current funding models do not encourage continuity of care between settings; they, as the report acknowledges ‘discourage’ them.

“As we have been saying, by focusing on activity – hospital procedures – the health system has missed opportunities to support effective, efficient healthcare delivered by GPs. This has resulted in a health system that fails to apply the value of preventative health, where the Federal Government spends $3,166 per person per year on public hospitals, versus $437 on general practice. The result? Growing gap fees for patients and missed opportunities to reduce hospital presentations.

“When it costs the government $611 per person for a non-admitted hospital presentation, versus around $90 for a patient to see a GP, it’s clear where the value lies. As the report says, we need a health system that rightly values the work of GPs in preventative health and in the community after a hospital discharge.

Conservative estimates suggest a 12% reduction in hospital readmissions could save the Australian health system a minimum of $69 million per year – and that’s conservative estimate isn’t even accounting for better quality of life.”

Health has been a major focus for the Federal Government, with a substantial $5.7 billion investment into general practice in the 2023 Budget that was described as a ‘gamechanger’ and a further $1.2 billion committed at the December 2023 National Cabinet meeting.

But Dr Higgins said the next agreement must have not just innovative approaches to funding the health system but give a clear signal to future GPs that their training will be valued.

“The fact is, you need to invest in the efficient parts of systems to get their benefit,” she said.

“The report discusses bundled funding to link healthcare delivered before, during, and after a planned hospital admission, for example, but we need to see real and significant investment in general practice after years of funding freezes and effective decline.

“General practice has a critical role to play in caring for people in the community and keeping them out of hospital. The report notes the growth in out-of-pocket costs in healthcare delivered by GPs, and workforce challenges across the health sector, but we need a clear commitment in the next agreement for appropriate funding for patients to see their GP when they need to, not just when they can afford it. Saving money on preventative care is how you face expensive hospital cost blowouts down the road.

“That also means the Government should not compromise on quality care. GPs and other healthcare workers want to work at the top of their scope, but we’ve seen states opt for cheap and cheerful approaches like pharmacy prescribing. This fragmented and reactive approach to people’s health might be tempting when a policymaker is looking for efficiencies, but the risks to patient safety of low value care means that kind of approach ends up costing you more in the long run, while delivering worse outcomes for patients. Too often, it’s just not worth it.

“The fact is, devaluation of general practice by successive governments has created workforce challenges. Tinkering around the edges won’t fix that – only investment can. Junior doctors and medical students need to know they’ll be valued and well-supported. It’s positive to see workforce signalled in the final report as a recommended priority in the development of the new health reform agreement.”

Dr Higgins also said there were further opportunities in data sharing that were supported in the report.

“This is also an opportunity to better integrate primary health and hospitals’ data,” she said.

“We can achieve this with pilot data-sharing arrangements between hospitals and primary care with the ultimate goal of better identifying at-risk patients, tailoring individual care/reducing low-value care, developing services tailored to the health needs of communities and funding support for specialist GPs located within hospitals to improve care.”


Key Facts:

The Federal Government spends $3,166 per person per year on public hospitals, versus $437 on general practice.

It costs the government $611 per person for a non-admitted hospital presentation, versus around $90 for a patient to see a GP.

Conservative estimates suggest a 12% reduction in hospital readmissions could save the Australian health system a minimum of $69 million per year.

Australia needs a holistic health system the recognises the interdependency between general practice, hospitals and allied health services. While the NHRA aspired to that, it hasn’t occurred in practice.

We need a clear commitment in the next agreement for appropriate funding for patients to see their GP when they need to, not just when they can afford it.

This is also an opportunity to better integrate primary health and hospitals’ data.


About us:

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) is the peak representative organisation for general practice, the backbone of Australia’s health system. We set the standards for general practice, facilitate lifelong learning for GPs, connect the general practice community, and advocate for better health and wellbeing for all Australians.

Visit www.racgp.org.au. To unsubscribe from RACGP media releases, click here.


Contact details:

John Ronan
Media Adviser

Ally Francis
Media Adviser

Stuart Winthrope
Media Officer

Contact: 03 8699 0992media@racgp.org.au

Follow us on Twitter: @RACGP and Facebook.

Media

Attachments

Download media

More from this category

  • Medical Health Aged Care
  • 04/04/2025
  • 09:41
Monash University

Monash Experts: World Health Day 2025 – Monday 7 April

World Health Day on Monday 7 April will celebrate healthy beginnings and hopeful futures through a 12-month maternal and newborn health campaign. Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures, will urge governments and the health community to ramp up efforts to end preventable maternal and newborn deaths, and to prioritise women’s longer-term health and well-being. The World Health Organization says almost 300,000 women die due to pregnancy or childbirth globally each year, while more than 2 million babies die in their first month and around 2 million more are stillborn. Health systems must therefore evolve to manage the many health issues that impact…

  • Government Federal, Medical Health Aged Care
  • 04/04/2025
  • 08:00
Australian College of Nursing

Nurses making significant contribution to success of Urgent Care Clinics

An evaluation report of Medicare Urgent Care Clinics (UCCs) provides promising evidence that the clinics achieve their desired objective of providing care for illnesses and injuries that are urgent, but not life-threatening, and reduce expensive visits to hospital emergency departments. ACN CEO, Adjunct Professor Kathryn Zeitz FACN, said the evaluation report, by the Department of Health and Aged Care, shows that that nurses are making a significant contribution to the impact of UCCs in improving patient access to quality health care when they need it. “Patients are clearly benefiting from theUCC program,” Adjunct Professor Zeitz said. “The evaluation supports what…

  • Contains:
  • Medical Health Aged Care, Science
  • 04/04/2025
  • 07:00
UNSW Sydney

Do infectious diseases cause dementia? AI will be looking into it

Working out the relationship between infectious diseases and dementia is a bit like the chicken and the egg problem. But artificial intelligence may help researchers decide which comes first. For decades, the medical profession has viewed dementia as a progressive cognitive decline that typically affects older adults. While there have been advances in diagnosing it earlier and slowing its progression, there is no known cure. But a new line of inquiry that first emerged in the 1990s is gaining ground among researchers, who are now exploring the possibility that infectious diseases might play a role in the development of this…

Media Outreach made fast, easy, simple.

Feature your press release on Medianet's News Hub every time you distribute with Medianet. Pay per release or save with a subscription.