Time to Salvage the National Health and Hospital Reform: at least some of it!

The National Health and Hospital Reform Agreement in Australia presents an opportunity to achieve better integration of Commonwealth-funded primary care and State-funded public health services. The changes to financial, pricing and governance arrangements (including the Commonwealth becoming the majority funder), the promotion of local decisionmaking, new pricing arrangements, restructuring of existing health services, etc may not be enough to achieve the expected health system integration or to end the cost and blame shifting within the sector. The reform must focus on: • incentives within the system to align primary and specialist healthcare; • ensuring that the reform package gives appropriate weighting to service delivery, quality and cost, as well as clinical governance considerations; and • ensuring that this primarily administrative and financial reform is adequately and appropriately scaffolded with necessary administrative support structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]