Community Healthcare Services for Australia's Ageing Population

The ageing population of Australia is growing and requires proper care and palliative, therapeutic, rehabilitative and assessment programs. Community care service is among the healthcare services that helps to provide quality interventions to a wide range of aged population of Australia. This presentation discusses its characteristics, its efficiency, equity and effectiveness as a care service for the Australian aged population.

Australia’s
ageing
population
AND COMMUNITY HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

Introduction
 As mentioned in the data of United
Nations (2015
), the aging population of world is
growing at an unprecedented rate
as mote than 8% of the world
population is aged (over 65 years).
 The data of National Institute on
Aging also determined that by the
year 2050, this percentage is
supposed to reach at 17% of entire
world population.

Introduction
 This indicated towards a wide range of
healthcare related needs for older
population, which is growing everyday.
 Different Prevention and control
strategies of several health concerns
of aged population requires a
multifaceted approach so that
incorporating active association of
health, social welfare, rural/urban
development and legal sectors
becomes possible (Census.gov 2018).
(Census.gov 2018)

Aging population stats
 As per the data of Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare
(2018) more than 3.5 million people
were above the age of 65 in the year
2016.
 Within this half of the older people
confesses some degree of disability,
or ailment but three-quarters of the
pollution confesses that health
status is good due to the available
healthcare amenities.
(National Institutes of Health 2018)

Aging population stats
 Further the stats also revealed that half
of Australia's older people (57%, or 2.1
million) were aged 65–74, one-third were
aged 74–84 (30%, or 1.1 million), and
13% were aged 85 and over (487,000).
 This stats are expected to grow
tremendously by the year 2046 as 35%
will be 74–84 years, and 19% will be 85
or above (National Institutes of Health
2018).
(National Institutes of Health 2018)

Healthcare policies for aged
population
 As the healthcare related needs of
Australian aged population is growing,
the government is trying to resolve all
the non communicable conditions and
trying to incorporate different healthcare
service
 such as inpatient, outpatient services,
healthcare homes and community care
services so that all the healthcare
concerns of such population, living in a
specific community can be addressed
(Australian Institute of Health and
Welfare 2018).
(National Institutes of Health 2018)

Stats related to healthcare
services for aged population is
Australia
 As per the data of Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare
(2018) , every 3 in 10 Medicare
claims comes from an aged person
over 65 years of age.
 8 in 10 aged individual receives
community care or home care facility
as well as residential care facility.
 As per the data, more than 6.2
million people aged over 65 claimed
Medicare in the year 2015
(Australian Institute of Health and
Welfare 2018). (National Institutes of Health 2018)

The challenges of healthcare
services in Australia
 The primary challenge for Australia
healthcare system is to understand the
cumulative need of aged population of multi
cultural Australian aged population as well
as managing their emergence of chronic
disease (Department of Health 2018).
 To determine it, the Australian Health Survey
conducted a study as per which, the most
common long-term health conditions are
arthritis (49%), Hypertensive disease (38%),
hearing loss (35%), vascular diseases (22%),
diabetes (15%) and cancer (7%) (Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare 2018).
(Department of Health 2018)

Community care service in
Australia
 Community healthcare services are one of the important aspect of aged
care services in Australia which is funded by both public and private
healthcare facilities.
 These community bases services helps in specific activities such as
• immunization services;
• smoking cessation programs
• Providing aged care and awareness programs
• nutrition awareness campaigns and
• weight loss programs

Community care service in
Australia
 The Australian Government sanctions a large
amount of healthcare funding for medical
services as well as it helps to subsidize the
medications for the population using
community healthcare services.
 Such community healthcare services are
mostly used by indigenous communities, non-
Australian origin communities such as Greek,
Chinese and Indian communities as their food,
diet and medication culture are different from
the medication culture followed in Australia
(Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
2018).

Community care service in
Australia
 The diseases which are being covered using community healthcare
services are:
 Chronic disease management
 Disability services
 Health promotional camps,
 Mental health services
 Refugee health services
 Substance abuse services
 Childcare and allied health services

Characteristics of this service
 It helps to increase the efficiency and
effectiveness of healthcare services for aged
population of a specific community by
providing them culturally competent
healthcare services (McPake and Mahal
2017).
 It improves the care quality by ensuring that
the patients receive right care at right time.
 it also aligns with the primary healthcare
system so that compliance to the healthcare
standards can be determined (Shrivastava,
Shrivastava and Ramasamy 2013).

Characteristics of this service
 It should also be noted that for such
community healthcare services, the State
and territory governments provide most
of the funding, contributing $6.2 billion in
2013–14, or 79% of community health
service expenditure (Katz et al. 2012).
 This helps to provide community care
services to people with low and middle
socio-economic services as they are
unable to apply for such treatment
services due to their financial inability
(Luckett et al. 2014).

Effectiveness
 While determining the effectiveness of community care services it
should be mentioned that due to such services aged populations are
able to get personalized geriatric services .
 As maximum of the aged population is Australia living away from their
children, community healthcare system is an effective way to provide
them, with their culturally competent care (Bauer et al. 2013).
 To determine the effectiveness of such service, researches conducted
surveys among the population of New South Wales, Australia in 2006,
and found that most of the population was associated with community
care services (48%) or used such services in the past (Hoogendijk
2016).

Effectiveness
 The effectiveness of the service can be determined using two aspects such as
• Clinical effectiveness and
• Population effectiveness
 Clinical effectiveness- It provided the aboriginals and Torres strait islanders
with different costly medication and also provided free healthcare
interventions as per their cultural competency so that the right to healthcare
can be provided to them.
 Population effectiveness- it ensures the healthcare quality among the
aboriginals and Torres strait islanders predominantly in the outskirts and rural
areas of Australia determining its effectiveness (Willis, Reynolds and Keleher
2016).

Efficiency
 The efficiency of community healthcare service for aged population of
Australia can be determined from the fact that it targets multiple assets
of healthcare system so that a holistic care starting from diagnosis to
Medicare to pharmaceuticals to geriatric care can be provided to the
aged communities if Australia (Ansari et al. 2012).
 The efficiency of the community healthcare service can be determined
using three aspects –
 Production efficiency on population perspective
 Production efficiency on clinical perspective
 Allocative efficiency

Efficiency
 Production efficiency (on population perspective ) -
The community healthcare services are appropriate for aged population as while living Alone or distant
from their children, aged individuals require cost effective and quality care at the same time.
therefore, on this basis it is emerged as one of the most cost effective care service (Drew, Kortt and
Dollery 2014).
 Production efficiency (on clinical perspective) –
On the basis of clinical efficiency, the community care service is comprised of registered nurses,
profound physicians and clinicians, and other experienced care service professionals so that quality
interventions could care can be provided to the older adults.
 Allocative efficiency –
It refers to the Application and merger of other health care strategies such as mental healthcare,
psychological care and Medicare facility so that in the process of care process can be applied
properly (Willis, Reynolds and Keleher 2016).

Equity
 Equity can be determined using two aspects of clinical and population
perspective.
Clinical/population perspective
 Procedural equity – The community care process for aged care is
provided to the all the communities throughout the Australia fairly and
does not depends on any specific socio economic classes (Carey et al.
2013).
 Substantive equity – these services are also free of disparity as it is
substantially equal for all the aged individuals of Australia (Thomas,
Wakerman and Humphreys 2015).

Recommendations
 As the healthcare system is still changing and needs of elderly population is
emerging, there is a set of recommendations that should be followed.
 The aged care should be provided to the patients as community service
depending on their priority and they must be allowed to move readily from home
and ambulatory care settings (McPake and Mahal 2017).
 Besides community care, Medical assessment, therapeutic care, restorative
efforts and rehabilitative should also be supported in community care settings.
 The community care centers should also provide long time care with short term
care process.
 The government should provide funding to the researchers so that measure and
compare outcomes and the relative costs can be researched (Luckett et al. 2014).

Summary
 The arte of aged population is growing tremendously nowadays and by
the year 2056, half of the world population will be above the age of 65.
 In this situation, the complex health of older population requires proper
care and palliative, therapeutic, rehabilitative and assessment
programs.
 Community care service is among the healthcare services that helps to
provide quality interventions to a wide range of aged population of
Australia.
 This presentation discusses its characteristics, its efficiency, equity and
effectiveness as a care service for the Australian aged population.

References
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References
 Census.gov (2018). An aging world. [online] Census.gov. Available at:
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References
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