Abstract
The Australian Health System:case study of health care technology assessment system, the system of health care complaints, community involvement in health policy development and the development of health manpower The main purposes of doing the review of particular components of the Australian health system were to look into its development experiences and various features as time went by. This review was aimed at reviewing Australian health care technology assessment system, the system of health care complaints, community involvement in health policy development and the development of health manpower. Health care technology assessment is considered as part of doing the policy research through these following stages : determining what health care technology should be assessed, evaluating various impacts resulted from using a particular technology, reporting the results and giving policy recommendation to policy makers and disseminating them to public. The development of the health care complaint system in Australia is basically on the principles which are the fault-based system with avoidable injuries and the no-fault based system with unavoidable injuries. There are a number of degrees of complaints process in Australia. If the injuries caused by no one’s fault, the case would be ended after both parties, the patient and the provider, reached an agreement. If the patient wonders his or her injuries or lost benefits were caused by the wrongdoing of the provider, he or she may report to the registration board to which the provider is registered. The board will set up the Medical Tribunal composed of the judge, the representative from the same specialty of the provider and the consumer representative. The tribunal will consider the case and if the provider did the wrong action to cause harm for the patient, the penalty will impose on the provider. Nevertheless, compensation for the patient can not be sought out through this process. Community involvement has been increasingly used for developing health policy and implementing health policy in order to increase responsiveness to communities’ needs and to support decentralised management of health system. The WHO also supported this approach by considering it as one of the important strategies of health promotion and prevention. The Australian Commonwealth Government has put that strategy into practice by setting up the Consumers’ Health Forum (CHF) as a channel for NGOs and communities to be part of health policy development. The last context reviewed in this report is health manpower development in which the report specifically picks up the development of general practitioners in Australia. To promote more integrated and efficient health care system, the Commonwealth Government set up the review committee to determine Australian GP’s problems. Originally, the necessity of determining GP problems was actually called out by the Australian Health Ministers’ Conference. The review committee was composed of technicians from the supply side and representatives from consumer groups and the central government and state governments. The Australian GP development was started from the trial projects in several areas around the country so as to seek suitable models and develop general practitioners’ skills and capacity to cope with changes.
