Healthdirect is a failure?
April 4, 2012
PHARMACISTS may have yet
another argument for more paid
professional services following a
report in Emergency Medicine
Australia which found that the
National Health Call Centre Network
(healthdirect Australia) is “dismally
failing” its reported aim of “helping
to ease demand on emergency
wards and general practice”.
The nurse-led national telephone
triage service was launched six
years ago with an initial budget of
$176.4 million over five years, and
was extended again last year with
an additional $50m to include
general practitioner support (afterhours
GP helpline) over three years.
Figures provided by the Rural
Doctors Association show that the
cost to the taxpayer for every person
the after-hours GP helpline tells not
to attend an ED is around $1,000.
According to the report’s author
Professor Yusuf Nagree, Professor
of Emergency Medicine at the
University of Western Australia,
there is no evidence to support the
government’s claims of benefit for
these services.
Backing up his argument, Nagree
said that advice prepared for
Australian Health Ministers prior to
the introduction of healthdirect
Australia, stated that “direct
evidence that call centres have
reduced unnecessary demands on
emergency departments, along
with the costs and possibly the
effectiveness of treatment of those
cases where emergency treatment
is appropriate, is weak and patchy”.
“Despite the government’s own
advice that there is no good
evidence that call centres reduce
ED demand, the government
continues to misrepresent this in
publicity of the after-hours GP
helpline,” he added.
According to Nagree the key-driver
to ED overcrowding is access block,
not low acuity patients.
In terms of a solution for ED and
GP overcrowding, Nagree suggests
that rather than the phone services,
the Government needs to address
access block, and provide funds for
extra hospital beds, as well as funding
for innovative ways of managing
patients needing domiciliary care,
and better support for these
patients in the community setting.
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