Investing in healthier lives: Pathways to healthcare financing reform in Australia

About this report

On 6 August 2015 The George Institute Australia hosted a roundtable to deliberate on the future of healthcare funding in Australia, and to formulate policy recommendations in this area. The aim was to examine the financial reforms needed to ensure the Australian health system is sustainable, equitable and able to respond to the growing burden of chronic disease and injury.

Three broad questions were addressed during this roundtable:

• What is the nature of the problem and what are the goals of reform?
• What are the best options for healthcare funding reform in Australia?
• How do we implement these reforms?

The roundtable took place in Sydney with over 30 stakeholders from different parts of the health sector (participants listed at the end of this report) and was Co-Chaired by Professor Vlado Perkovic and Professor Stephen Jan from The George Institute for Global Health.

To encourage open discussion, the meeting was conducted under a version of ‘Chatham House rules’ where information provided and views expressed are not attributed to individuals or organisations

in this report. This report is a summary of this discussion and the agreed recommendations that resulted from this specific group of participants.

While it is recognised that there are many other critical issues that need considering when examining the health system, the discussion was focused on assessing funding models in this instance. The George Institute will convene future forums to have targeted conversations addressing other issues critical to health system reform.