Report: Quality of Healthcare in Australia - Issues and Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the quality of healthcare in Australia, examining the challenges faced by both patients and hospitals. It delves into the factors negatively impacting healthcare quality, the role of government in shaping healthcare plans, and the perspectives of consumers and healthcare providers. The report explores issues such as the government's involvement in healthcare, the impact of population growth, and the importance of quality healthcare provision, particularly in rural areas. It also defines the concept of quality in healthcare, considering structural, process, and outcome dimensions. The report highlights incidents that have affected healthcare quality and discusses the government's role in ensuring effective care, addressing overuse, underuse, and misuse of healthcare services. Furthermore, it compares Australia's healthcare system to those of other countries, while also acknowledging the room for improvement in areas such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. The report concludes by emphasizing the need for continued efforts to enhance the quality and accessibility of healthcare in Australia.

Quality of Healthcare in Australia
Group Detail
Name ID Contribution
Country Name

Executive Summary
This report concentrates on healthcare provision throughout Australia and the issues faced
both by the patients and the hospitals in the healthcare provision. The attributes that
negatively affect the quality of healthcare in Australia are taken into consideration as well so
as to have an overview of the issue. The government's inclusion in forming healthcare plans
and the reasons behind their formation are also taken into consideration as it affects all the
parties involved in the healthcare segment i.e. stakeholders of the hospital, hospital staff and
the patients receiving the healthcare.

Contents
Executive Summary...............................................................................................................................2
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................4
Reason Behind Selecting the subject.....................................................................................................5
Quality of Healthcare............................................................................................................................5
Government Involvement in Healthcare Quality in Australia................................................................7
Is the healthcare provided in Australia up to the required quality?........................................................9
Consumer Perspective on Quality of Healthcare in Australia..........................................................10
Hospital Perspective on Quality of Healthcare in Australia:............................................................11
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................12
References...........................................................................................................................................13

Introduction
This report identifies the issues faced in the medical industry in Australia that affects both the
patients and the hospital staff equally. This inadequacy affects both the parties in different
ways that are understood with the help of literature provided by various researches taken
place in different hospitals around Australia. This affects patients as they are unable to get the
treatment they require and for the staff as they are unable to treat the patient in the best way
possible due to the lack of quality of healthcare provided. Various reasons affecting the
quality of the healthcare provided in Australian hospitals are also considered in the report and
the advantages and disadvantages of the healthcare that is provided to the patients are also
mentioned (Australian Government, 2016).

Reason Behind Selecting the subject
The main reason behind selecting the subject on the quality of healthcare in Australia is to put
the current issues that the country is facing in terms of healthcare could be put into
perspective. The population in Australia is growing by the day and hence requires proper
healthcare facilities in order to not only survive but to thrive. Proper healthcare facilities are
hence deemed too important for the nation. Population increase not only puts and impact on
the country but also catalyses spread of diseases at a faster rate. This could prove to be a mass
emergency in a situation where the whole process is not thought through and planned. The
main aspect taken into consideration is the proper quality of healthcare that needs be
delivered to the residents of the country. Working in the Acute Medical Unit or AMU makes
one realize the requirement of good quality healthcare specially in the rural region where it is
most scarce. The rural area population suffers the lack of quality the most despite being less
in population. This is so because the population is sparsely populated over a large region into
divided communities, this causes a problem for the healthcare department to open up as many
hospitals as there arecommnities. Even if hospitals are available, they lack most speciality
trained staff and work with the helpof AMUs to either take care of the situation or to refer it
to another hospital.
Quality of Healthcare
In order to understand the quality of healthcare, the definition of quality is required to be
mentioned first. Quality is a broad term, which means a standard set to identify if anything is
up to its mark, or not. This clearly means that quality might have a different meaning for
different people altogether in an industry. The same is the case with the healthcare sector. In
healthcare, stakeholders might have a different meaning of good quality and patients might

have a different meaning of good quality healthcare. The Institute of Medicine provides a
general definition of the quality of health service provision:‘The degree to which health
services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes
and are consistent with current professional knowledge’ (NSW Government, 2018).
The main concentration here is on meeting or exceeding the needs of the customers i.e.
customers in this specific scenario. Both dynamic and complex environments affect the
healthcare sector. These factors mainly include patients, their disease processes, medical and
other staff, hospital and community settings, infrastructure, equipment, policies, and
procedures. Because of all these factors, the healthcare industry becomes risky. These risks
are in high need to be identified and found a solution so that contingency situations could be
avoided and if they do happen then easily taken care of. For this, proper dimensions are
required to be set so that the process could work out within the set boundaries. These
dimensions could be attributes such as effectiveness, safety, appropriateness, efficiency,
consumer participation, and access. Here anticipates outcome also becomes an important
factor that is taken into consideration. The whole process could be divided into 3 parts i.e.
Structure, process, and outcome. Here structure mainly defines the input components to the
process, which in healthcare could mean the conditions in which the healthcare is provided or
training of the healthcare provider, the process could define the care that is received by the
patients and the outcome could refer to the effects of the healthcare given to the patient. The
inadequacy of this systematic method could lead to a problem affecting everyone involved
negatively. For example, in 1999 an incident took place in a hospital in New South Wales in
the operation theatre where the patients undergoing endoscopic procedures were incorrectly
injected with a solution containing a caustic substance. When this news became public, the
whole hospital along with its staff faced a severe backlash from the outraged community of
people (Rogan & Bartlett, 2018). The problem that was found out in the investigation

included, inadequacies in computerized requisition system, absence of feedback loop in the
requisition system to correct out mistakes and to keep loopholes in check, inadequate staff
training into dealing with such situations and lack of a health professional checking the
solution before it was injected into the patients.
This problem caused a serious dent in the hospital and its staff's image and made the hospital
consider the factors to improve upon the attributes they were lacking at the hospital.
Healthcare commission is formed to form the healthcare-related rules and regulations and to
check whether the rules are getting properly implemented or not and also to check if there is
any healthcare violation in the medical industry by any hospital.
Government Involvement in Healthcare Quality in Australia
The involvement of government is necessary in terms of healthcare as there is evidence that
the healthcare providers around the world are incapable of providing decent healthcare to the
people in need efficiently when left to their own. The main reason behind the government
involving itself is to provide healthcare to people of that country at low cost and also as a
common welfare of promising health to the people. Generally, in all the countries, most
patients require high-quality services, a system that is transparent to the public and is capable
of generating trust among its demographic by constantly working towards it, a system that
does not adversely affect consumer outcomes while making best use of its resources. The
inadequacy part runs both ways, in some cases, the hospital is unable to provide the desired
healthcare to the patients and in some cases, the patient tries to misuse the healthcare services
provided to them. In order to avoid both cases, the government formulates the rules so that
none of the feels cheated or misused (Mossialos&Djordjevic, 2017). The government's
involvement ensures the safety and quality of healthcare provided to the customers. The main

question here arises on how the government would intervene in the whole process. In most
cases, the consumer of healthcare feels cheated, as they are mostly under-informed about
their healthcare plans and benefits. This problem needs to be corrected soon so as to avoid
any misunderstandings and to bridge the communication gap between the healthcare
providers and the consumers. The consumers need to know about the plans and procedures
related to the healthcare provider, which could solve the problem on both ends. In addition,
the staff of the healthcare provision company needs to have proper training so that no errors
are caused by their end. Most consumers feel cheated because of their concept in mind of ill-
informed data of their healthcare services.
Most important factor is the appropriate use of healthcare services as that affects the
government's policy, patients as well as the hospital's staff. In most cases, the consumers are
not aware of the type of healthcare they require, in that case, the government needs to
intervene so that the consumers do not get cheated in getting proper healthcare and could be
ensured the best quality healthcare (Australian Commission, 2018). This goes both ways as in
some cases even the consumers try to misuse the benefits provided by the hospital leading to
distasteful service provision on the hospital's end. As Buchan notes: ‘The problem for
policymakers in any country is how do they intervene and to what purpose? Given the
multiple components of quality, the need for tradeoffs between one dimension and another,
the varying views of what is important and the relative power of different groups within the
system, this is an area fraught with difficulty.’
The factors that affect the government’s intervention in the process of healthcare provision in
terms of quality is due to one or all of three reasons as mentioned:

Overuse is when the risk of harm exceeds the potential benefit of the treatment i.e. when
there are incentives over the service provided to the patients, the medical staff tends to
provide more and more in order to gain from the treatment.
Underuse is when the service is not provided even when it could potentially benefit the
consumer of healthcare. In this case, the reason behind it could be the access barrier to
healthcare in which the consumers suffer a loss of quality healthcare provision
(Commonwealth of Australia, 2016).
Misuse is when there is an avoidable complication of using the healthcare process for the
wrong benefits of someone, which could be either the hospital, or the consumers of
healthcare. This creates certain mistrust between both the parties and hence should be
avoided. In order to avoid all the issues mentioned above, the government needs to come up
with a plan to keep the healthcare segment abreast of all these issues. The government is
required to ensure that effective care should always be provided to those in need, ineffective
healthcare services are not provided and preventable complications in the healthcare industry
be avoided and eliminated so that neither parties suffer due to it. These factors are the first
and foremost goals set by the government to work upon to benefit both parties (Hilless&
Healy, 2011).
Is the healthcare provided in Australia up to the required quality?
In comparison to the healthcare services provided by different countries around the world,
Australia seems to have better healthcare than most although there is little data to support
this. In order to have evidence, the healthcare provision committees and welfare regulations
could be mentioned i.e. Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council 1996, National Expert
Advisory Group on Safety and Quality in Healthcare 1998, Australian Patient Safety

Foundation 1998 and Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 1998 (Calder, Dunkin, &
Rochford, 2019).
The quality of Healthcare provision in Australia could be determined by various factors on all
the levels i.e. providers and consumers. In an introduction to Australia’s Health 1998, the
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare states:‘Australia is one of the healthiest countries
in the world and Australians are becoming even healthier. This is shown by declining death
rates, increasing life expectancy, a low rate of life-threatening infectious disease and, for
most people, ready access to healthcare when needed. But there is still room for
improvement: good health is not enjoyed by all, and the health of Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander peoples is poor by any standard.’
This quote clearly states that the Healthcare provided in Australia might tend to be better than
most nations but it still faces the issue of equal distribution among all its natives.
This could better be understood by pointing out the quality aspect of healthcare on all three
levels, consumers and healthcare providers (Brown, 2018).
Consumer Perspective on Quality of Healthcare in Australia
Consumer perspective on Australian Healthcare provision could be measured with respect to
several attributes such as the attitude of hospital staff, overall satisfaction with the healthcare
services provided, communication with younger patients, courtesy of doctors and nurses in
assisting the patients, etc. Major surveys have been conducted throughout Australia to find
the issues in Healthcare by many hospitals and medical institutes (AMA, 2007). Although the
satisfaction level among the people has been a controversial issue as the idea of satisfaction
could not be minimized to a single attribute and can have various aspects of it and the issue

could a spectrum of related underlying problems causing dissatisfaction. Although the main
reasons for dissatisfaction mentioned by the consumers were the unequal healthcare services
provided to people with different ethnicities throughout the country, long waiting time in
queues to get the required treatment, bad quality meals provided at the hospitals and long
waiting durations for the same-day patients (PC News, 2015).
Hospital Perspective on Quality of Healthcare in Australia:
The main concentration of hospitals is safety in service provision to the patients, which
generally means freedom from accidental injury. The hospitals in Australia are aware of the
fact that they cannot limit the frequency of adverse events taking place, which means that
these events vary enormously and there is a dependence on voluntary reporting of adverse
events. The important aspect that the hospitals need to recognize is to provide apt healthcare
to the people of Australia. In this, the stakeholders' benefit and the consumers' benefit go
hand in hand. As the hospitals are only successful when both parties are benefitting from it.
This makes the hospital staff a medium to convey to both the parties and to help them
through it. The hospital staff hence mainly suffer from the issue of balancing out the service
provided to both the industries (AIHW, 2018).

Conclusion
The research conducted here is to understand both levels of Healthcare and its quality of
healthcare provision issues. In this report, it is also mentioned the government involvement in
the healthcare provider to the consumers to benefit both the parties and to avoid issues of
underuse, overuse, and misuse of healthcare benefits provided to the consumers. The quality
of healthcare can be based on various aspects and affects both the hospital staff i.e. the
providers of healthcare and the consumers i.e. the patients receiving the healthcare.