ACTA has welcomed the opportunity to provide feedback to the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (the Commission) and the Australia Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) following the publication of a discussion paper entitled: paper “Exploring Healthcare Variation in Australia: Analyses Resulting from an OECD Study”.

ACTA’s submission made the following key points in relation to addressing unwarranted variation in treatments and outcomes within the Australian health care system...

Key Points

1. Addressing the silent and prohibitively expensive epidemic of unwarranted variation in healthcare, is an urgent imperative for Governments and for the payers and providers of healthcare.
    
2. The strategy to reduce unwarranted variation in healthcare must include the infrastructure necessary to systematically:

• IDENTIFY unwarranted variation
• INTERPRET unwarranted variation
• RESPOND to unwarranted variation

3. The systematic identification, interpretation and response to unwarranted variation requires a ‘self-improving’ healthcare system. Such a system combines:

• the accurate collection of treatment and outcome data;
• the capacity to analyse these data to provide meaningful feedback to clinicians and providers; and
• the capacity to undertake robust clinical trials that provide definitive answers to important clinical questions that arise from understanding these variations.

4. Essential infrastructure for establishing optimal practice and reducing unwarranted variation within a self-improving health system are:

• Clinical quality registries that can monitor health care interventions and report risk-adjusted outcomes across whole populations (IDENTIFY and INTERPRET).
• Clinical trials networks that can conduct large, definitive public-good trials (analyse and RESPOND).

5. Critical and urgent investment is needed to embed the infrastructure for clinical quality registries and clinical trials networks, particularly in high-significance and high cost areas of healthcare, within the health system in order to realise improvements in patient outcomes and reduction of wasted health dollars.
    
6. Complex and inconsistent regulatory processes across jurisdictions are unnecessarily impeding the collection and use of clinical data within registries and clinical trials.
    
7. Nationally coordinated public education is needed to highlight to the community that unwarranted variation occurs, and that participation in clinical trials and registries is part of the solution to this problem.

 

ACTA's full submission can be read here.

A copy of the full report “Exploring Healthcare Variation in Australia: Analyses Resulting from an OECD Study” can be accessed at http://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Exploring-Healthcare-Variation-in-Australia-Analyses-Resulting-from-an-OECD-Study.pdf