Australia’s Health Panel: Your Chance to Influence the Health System

DEAKIN, Australia, April 24 -- The Consumers Health Forum of Australia issued the following news release:

Australians will get a chance to have their say about the health system by joining a new online public panel being launched by the Consumers Health Forum of Australia.

Australia's Health Panel will, for the first time provide a national platform for people to register their views on health issues that are touching their lives, whether it be access to the right care, costs or issues of safety and quality.

"The cost and complexity of the health system leaves many Australians feeling unable or powerless to influence the state of their own of their community's health services," the CEO of the Consumers Health Forum, Leanne Wells, said today.

"Australia's Health Panel opens the opportunity for people to join a national initiative to help CHF put forward practical solutions for ways we can improve health and care, adding to the deep insights we already draw from our valued and diverse membership.

"This week is Patient Experience Week, an appropriate time to introduce an innovation which will enable people to communicate their experiences with the health system in ways that can feed these important insights into ideas to improve the system.

"In this emerging era of greater consumer choice and power over health care, a platform for people to express their views makes more sense than ever.

"The voice of Australian health consumers is vital to the maintenance and development of a quality health system that provides the right care to all regardless of income.

"Responses to our recent Out of Pocket Pain survey highlighted the level of community exasperation at the scale and unexpected nature of medical costs.

"We also have significant changes on the horizon in areas like health insurance and primary health care which will impact on many people who in the normal course of events would not have a means of expressing their views on such changes.

"As patients living with chronic illness learn, experience with a disease and its treatment can play a pivotal role in helping produce better outcomes. It might be as simple or as complicated as navigating through an increasingly complex system to the most appropriate care, or ensuring consumers can readily access their health records.

"At the everyday level of care that so many depend on there are deep gaps in coordination and integration of care, between hospitals, doctors and allied health providers.

"It is patient-centred care which in many instances ensures better outcomes. The Productivity Commission, in its recent Shifting the Dial report on productivity in health, detailed a long list of problems, including poorly integrated primary and hospital care, failure of information to follow the patient, meagre funding on long-run health prevention measures, and lack of localized funding to generate locally efficient solutions.

"These are the sorts of areas where patient views can help lead us to better outcomes.

"In the coming weeks, Australia's Health Panel will be seeking your responses on vital health issues.

"Register now at this address to lend your voice for a better health system - https://chf.org.au/australias-health-panel