The rising prevalence of chronic disease requires a concerted focus to better integrate care and to achieve better health outcomes and greater system efficiencies. Achieving and evaluating these improved patient outcomes and system efficiencies will take both time and investment, and will challenge existing models of care. This paper examines the Health Care Home program...

The cost of government inaction on the social determinants of health, leading to health inequalities for the most disadvantaged Australians of working age, is substantial. This was measured in terms not only of the number of people affected but also their overall well-being, their ability to participate in the workforce, their earnings from paid work...

The new private health insurance reforms - in particular the 30 per cent rebate and Lifetime Health Cover - were partly aimed at relieving pressures on public hospitals. Combining the use of two new models - Private Health Insurance and NSW hospitals - Agnes Walker, Richard Percival, Linc Thurecht, Jim Pearse estimate that, with the...

The study found that the poor used public hospitals more than the rich, however for private hospitals this pattern was reversed - with patients in the poorest socioeconomic group having a 19 per cent lower hospitalisation rate than patients in the richest such group. Other findings were that, despite little change in the utilisation of...

This study examines the socioeconomic status of NSW hospital patients in 1999-2000 and projects likely hospital costs to 2009-10. It draws upon unique patient based datasets from NSW public and private hospitals that include hospital admissions, as well as the associated treatment costs in each of the four years to 1999-2000.