The new "Indigenous health" incentive payment: issues and challenges

Couzos, Sophie, and Thiele, Dea Delaney (2010) The new "Indigenous health" incentive payment: issues and challenges. Medical Journal of Australia, 192 (3). pp. 154-157.

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Abstract

• Paying incentives above the baseline Medicare Benefits Schedule to health services for the additional work required to meet the health needs of Aboriginal people or Torres Strait Islanders might mitigate inequalities of care, but evidence supporting this is lacking.

• The proposed "Indigenous health" incentive payment to reduce Aboriginal health disadvantage, which is largely aimed at increasing the responsiveness of mainstream general practices, provides an opportunity to examine the assumptions behind this and other recent health reform bids.

• Contentious implementation issues include: the ineligibility of several Aboriginal community controlled health services (ACCHSs) to receive this payment; determining Aboriginality and the potential for misappropriation of payments; the difficulty accounting for practice population diversity and patient mobility; and concerns about the benefits or otherwise to the Aboriginal community.

• Evaluation of the measure will present problems: to attribute outcomes, an evaluation must disaggregate outcomes by type of service provider (general practice or ACCHS).

• If these challenges are not addressed, this initiative may end up merely funding coordination of care for those Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders who are already regular users of the health system.

Item ID: 30358
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1326-5377
Additional Information:

This article is a modified extract from the Indigenous health incentive payment: NACCHO Issues Paper (May 2009) produced for the Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services.

Date Deposited: 16 Oct 2014 05:19
FoR Codes: 11 MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES > 1117 Public Health and Health Services > 111717 Primary Health Care @ 100%
SEO Codes: 92 HEALTH > 9203 Indigenous Health > 920303 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health - Health System Performance (incl. Effectiveness of Interventions) @ 100%
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