EXPERTS are calling for a national system to scrutinise the merits of every clinical intervention to ensure valuable health dollars are not wasted on ineffective measures.
Writing in the MJA, leading academics argued that a process to identify and cut funding from poorly performing programs would improve the health system by making it more efficient and accountable, without the need for additional resources.
The paper echoes recent recommendations from the Federal Government’s National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission to install a “national health intervention assessment”.
Lead author Dr Adam Elshaug (PhD), Hanson research fellow at the University of Adelaide, said the resulting savings could be reinvested into proven interventions.
“[By] moving resources away from what might be termed inappropriate [areas] and to areas that are more appropriate it is actually an improvement in health care,” he said.
Although potential savings were not yet available, research on case studies was currently underway, he added.
Insertion of tympanostomy tubes and antidepressant medication for the treatment of mild-moderate depression were two interventions recommended for scrutiny.
Professor of health economics at Sydney University Gavin Mooney said a transparent, explicit system of priority setting in Australian health care was “long overdue”, and an independent review body would lead to more efficient spending of health funding.
“At the moment, by and large, the priorities are set by wheeling and dealing between the members of the medical profession,” he said. “It may end up with something that is good, but essentially [less powerful doctors groups] such as psychiatrists and geriatricians tend to miss out.”
Dr Elshaug suggested that, while debate was needed over whether a new independent authority should be established to carry out the assessments, another option was to expand the existing Medical Services Advisory Committee.
MJA 2009; 190:269-73.