The report by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety on the impact of Covid-19 is superficial and adds little to what is already being done to prevent and manage Covid in aged care. The Commission’s conclusion regarding Australia’s performance on COVID-19 in residential aged care is misleading and obscures the truth. (more…)
Category: Health
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The National Disability Insurance Scheme: a consumer’s experience
Much has been made of the failings of the NDIS, but as a reluctant and apprehensive consumer, I have been more than pleasantly surprised. (more…)
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Residential aged care funding rules are unfair and inefficient
The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has highlighted the tragic weakness of residential aged care throughout Australia. Hundreds of older Australians have died prematurely during the COVID pandemic. For their sake, and ours, this tragedy must prove to be the wake-up call that prompts a major shakeup of the industry.
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LobbyLand. The politics of fossil fuels – the pits!
Fossil fuel lobbying is a cancer inflicting death, illness and misery on Australian society. How does it operate, what are its impacts and how can society allow this disabling condition to continue without treatment? (more…)
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Aged care providers have Coalition wrapped around their little fingers
Locking out visitors has made it difficult for staff to meet the daily care needs of aged care residents. So said the royal commissioners. What an indictment on aged care providers. They receive billions a year in funding, yet they rely on the unpaid work of family, friends and volunteers to help with meals, exercise and care for their loved ones. Surely it is time for complete accountability for their government funding. (more…)
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Social prescribing links workers
Social prescribing acknowledges that the provision of holistic, patient-centred healthcare must move beyond a medical model and consider the wider social determinants of health. Link workers can provide personalised support to help patients identify and achieve health and wellness goals and linkage into appropriate community services.
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First Nations people, their health, and this coronavirus
The results of the efforts to suppress the potential damage to Indigenous Australians from the pandemic should be used as an example of how Indigenous people can be more meaningfully involved in their own health programs. (more…)
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Tackling the mental health crisis in the time of Covid 19; prescribing the same remedy over and over again?
The Productivity Commission’s inquiry into mental health is recommending the same policies which have been advocated for the better part of 30 years. There is nothing to suggest that continuing to pursue them will produce the improvements that the Commonwealth government seeks.
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Out-of-pocket medical financial abuse
Charging unjustifiable and unreasonable fees leading to very high out-of-pocket expenses for specialist medical care is an abuse of power and should be called financial abuse. It should also be deemed a form of professional misconduct. (more…)
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Aged care has become a property play – perhaps even for some church groups?
Whenever governments outsource or subsidize a community service, it is amazing how quickly and cleverly the private sector finds a way to milk it.
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Home based and community health care
Home based care and community health teams require a diversity of funding models. Post COVID ,it is most unlikely that community health care will return to its pre-COVID state. (more…)
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Australian aged care death rate among highest in the world. Aged care Insite. August 12 2020
The aged care royal commission has heard evidence that the government had no COVID-19 plan for the aged care sector, leading to one of the highest aged care death rates in the world. -
What happens when we treat aged care residents as “consumers” (Inside Story Sep 14, 2020)
Decades of misguided policy sowed the seeds of a human rights disaster.
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Cuban and American healthcare (CounterPunch Sep 3, 2020)
Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate and longer life expectancy than the US while spending less than 10% per person annually on healthcare. Cuban healthcare is much better and very much cheaper than US healthcare. (more…)
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Promoting health equity: mixed scorecard for Australia’s policy response to Covid-19
Covid-19 has shone a spotlight on health inequities in society. Despite claims that ‘we are all in this together’, just like other historical pandemics, inequalities in Covid-19 mortality and morbidity reflect existing social and economic inequalities. Australia’s Federal and State/Territory policy response to the pandemic reveals some positive short-term policies. However, there is an urgent need for multisectoral social and economic policy that prioritises health equity.
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Coughing up a smokescreen
It isn’t accidental irony but a deliberate insult from Big Baccy – two fingers to the government, medicos and public health pros. Just above the small government warning on the ad banner’s bottom corner showing a tracheotomy is the latest buy-line: ‘I choose, I live.’
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Aged care should not be ‘pre-palliative care’ as Scott Morrison suggests
In Question Time, Prime Minister Scott Morrison made an unfortunate but revealing statement about our attitudes to aged care. He said: “For those of us who have had to make decisions about putting our own family, our own parents, into aged care, we have known that when we’ve done that we are putting them into pre-palliative care.”
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Overcoming individualisation is fundamental to social change
Individualisation positions the idea of the autonomous, self-contained individual at the centre of political, ethical and psychological frameworks, and determines much of our current politics. (more…)
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PART 2: COVID controversies and vaccine shortcuts
The urgent need for a vaccine to protect us from COVID-19 is obvious. Scientists have produced some promising candidates but, as so often is the case in this pandemic perceived political imperatives are demanding ‘shortcuts’ in the development process that may hinder essential studies of efficacy and safety.
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Covid controversies continue to hinder our efforts to end a deadly pandemic – Part 1
It is truly lamentable that in this most scientific of all ages, so much of the world is making a mess of tackling the worst public health challenge in a hundred years.
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Victoria should stay the course
Victoria is now facing a difficult choice: to continue stringent lockdowns in the hope of getting COVID-19 cases down to zero, or accepting the lesser goal of opening up once cases are in single digits.
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Air pollution from coal blights young lives, even before birth
Air pollution from Australia’s dirty coal-burning power stations needlessly causes 850 cases of low birth weight and at least 800 premature deaths per year. Coal is also the number one cause of the climate crisis. Clean renewable technology is available now to prevent these problems and protect young lives.
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Sexual misconduct in our society: Can we do better?
Collectively our society can do better. Women should not have to rely on voluntary social networks, valuable though they are, to have the confidence to come forward when they encounter unacceptable sexualised conduct. (more…)
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How market forces are failing us in opting out to private and for-profit child care
It is extraordinary that about 70% of our long day care services are now run by for-profit operators when we know that the for-profit sector generally delivers lower quality education care. (more…)
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Tackling substance abuse in the coronavirus pandemic
The social and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic are driving more people to substance abuse while also limiting access to prevention, treatment, support and rehabilitation – services already in short supply. Without immediate actions, the consequences will be felt for years to come.
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It was a mistake to privatise aged care
We are trying to care for our elderly on the cheap. What an indictment that we seem willing to spend more on defence than we do on the elderly. (more…)
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PART 2: Review of the Medicare Benefits scheme
The Medical Benefits Schedule [MBS ] Review Taskforce was established in June 2015 by Sussan Ley, then Federal Minister for Health. It followed feedback from clinicians and the broader community that certain items on the MBS did not reflect clinical best practice and in some cases were creating distortions in services provided. (more…)
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Robodebt and suicide
Department head stubbornly avoids answering questions on the role of Robodebt and the death of Australians and whether she apologised for those deaths. (more…)
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PART 1: Review of the Medicare Benefits scheme
The first part of this piece describes the blockages in the past that choked debate on some fundamental issues. The second part outlines some of the important achievements of the current Medical Benefits Scheme Review Taskforce and set up the basis for sustainable debate about the future of Medicare.
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Aged Care as part of a National Care Service.
This post was inspired by a piece posted on Pearls and Irritations by Sue Rabbitt Roff which was so comprehensive and profoundly logical that it was only on a second reading that its full value was appreciated. (more…)