The Independent Hospital Pricing Authority has been established under legislation that will set a national efficient price for public hospital services and determine the commonwealth government’s funding to the states and state funding authorities.
It is proposed that this key action - as part of health reform – “.. will take the politics out of health funding….. and provide the health system with stability and robustness”.
Like any major change there are questions to be answered. How will the national efficient price be established, given state and territory governments are at different starting points in developing activity based funding? How will primary health and community care be affected?
The Authority has released a draft pricing paper ‘Towards a Pricing Framework” that includes a set of principles to help guide decisions about how best to price public hospital services. These principles draw on the National Health Reform Agreement, as well as international and Australian experience about reforming health care payments.
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