Urgent health system reform needed to tackle disease epidemic

Has Medical Care been too successful. Are we holding back death to have people vegetate with chronic diseases? Around the world the various health care systems are asking the same question about the mpact of chronic disease. Australia’s health care system needs new reform on the same scale as the introduction of Medicare in the 1970s if it is to cope with the 21st Century epidemics of chronic disease, says the head of a new health policy research centre to be launched at the University of Melbourne. Associate Professor Dunt says this is unsuitable for the treatment of chronic diseases which requires teams of health professionals as the fee-for-service system has developed a largely uncoordinated health care system based on mixed public/private health care sectors and the overlapping roles of Commonwealth and State governments in both funding and delivering services.”