A review of the impact of financing mechanisms on maternal health care in Australia
Fox, Haylee, Topp, Stephanie M., Callander, Emily, and Lindsay, Daniel (2019) A review of the impact of financing mechanisms on maternal health care in Australia. BMC Public Health, 19. 1540.
|
PDF (Published Version)
- Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (1MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Background:
The World Health Organization states there are three interrelated domains that are fundamental to achieving and maintaining universal access to care - raising sufficient funds for health care, reducing financial barriers to access by pooling funds in a way that prevents out-of-pocket costs, and allocating funds in a way that promotes quality, efficiency and equity. In Australia, a comprehensive account of the mechanisms for financing the health system have not been synthesised elsewhere. Therefore, to understand how the maternal health system is financed, this review aims to examine the mechanisms for funding, pooling and purchasing maternal health care and the influence these financing mechanisms have on the delivery of maternal health services in Australia.
Methods:
We conducted a scoping review and interpretative synthesis of the financing mechanisms and their impact on Australia’s maternal health system. Due to the nature of the study question, the review had a major focus on grey literature. The search was undertaken in three stages including; searching (1) Google search engine (2) targeted websites and (3) academic databases. Executive summaries and table of contents were screened for grey literature documents and Titles and Abstracts were screened for journal articles. Screening of publications’ full-text followed. Data relating to either funding, pooling, or purchasing of maternal health care were extracted for synthesis.
Results:
A total of 69 manuscripts were included in the synthesis, with 52 of those from the Google search engine and targeted website (grey literature) search. A total of 17 articles we included in the synthesis from the database search.
Conclusion:
Our study provides a critical review of the mechanisms by which revenues are raised, funds are pooled and their impact on the way health care services are purchased for mothers and babies in Australia. Australia’s maternal health system is financed via both public and private sources, which consequentially creates a two-tiered system. Mothers who can afford private health insurance – typically wealthier, urban and non-First Nations women - therefore receive additional benefits of private care, which further exacerbates inequity between these groups of mothers and babies. The increasing out of pocket costs associated with obstetric care may create a financial burden for women to access necessary care or it may cause them to skip care altogether if the costs are too great.
Item ID: | 61191 |
---|---|
Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
ISSN: | 1471-2458 |
Keywords: | Health systems, Financing, Maternal health, Medicare, Privatisation, Australia |
Related URLs: | |
Copyright Information: | © The Author(s). 2019. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
Additional Information: | A version of this publication was included as Chapter 8 of the following PhD thesis: Fox, Haylee (2021) Medicalised childbirth: variation in care and drivers of maternal health service provision in Queensland, Australia. PhD thesis, James Cook University, which is available Open Access in ResearchOnline@JCU. Please see the Related URLs for access. |
Funders: | Research Training Program Stipend (RTPS) |
Projects and Grants: | RTPS postgraduate research doctoral program |
Date Deposited: | 17 Dec 2019 04:17 |
FoR Codes: | 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3215 Reproductive medicine > 321502 Obstetrics and gynaecology @ 20% 42 HEALTH SCIENCES > 4203 Health services and systems > 420306 Health care administration @ 40% 44 HUMAN SOCIETY > 4407 Policy and administration > 440706 Health policy @ 40% |
SEO Codes: | 94 LAW, POLITICS AND COMMUNITY SERVICES > 9402 Government and Politics > 940204 Public Services Policy Advice and Analysis @ 45% 92 HEALTH > 9202 Health and Support Services > 920207 Health Policy Evaluation @ 45% 92 HEALTH > 9201 Clinical Health (Organs, Diseases and Abnormal Conditions) > 920114 Reproductive System and Disorders @ 10% |
Downloads: |
Total: 859 Last 12 Months: 9 |
More Statistics |