Health Care Homes Initiative gains $120 million in Government Funding

With a reported one in two Australians living with a chronic condition and one in five managing two or more, Minister for Health and Aged Care, the Hon. Sussan Ley MP announced the stage one regions who will be participating in the Home Care Health Model, an initiative to strengthen how Medicare deliver better health outcomes for Australians.

Health Care Homes provides Australians with a local health care team - led by the GP - they can trust to coordinate their health care needs throughout the year to ensure patients remain happy, healthy and out of hospital. 

In a press release for the programme, the Minister's office advised, Health Care Homes was a better way to remunerate general practice that recognises the commitment and diligence they show every day in managing time-consuming chronic conditions. 

The Turnbull Government will invest nearly $120 million to roll out the first stage of Health Care Homes, including over $90 million in payments to support patient care and $21 million for infrastructure, training and education. 

The first stage is believed to benefit up to 65,000 patients across 200 GP clinics and Aboriginal Medical Services Australia-wide and will be evaluated to enable refinements to the model prior to a national roll-out.

The model has long been campaigned for by doctors and is based on the recommendations from Health Reform Commission undertaken by the former Labor Government in 2009.

The first stage trial will include the Primary Health Network regions of: Western Sydney, Perth North, Tasmania, Hunter New England and Central Coast, Brisbane North, South Eastern Melbourne, Adelaide, Northern Territory, Nepean-Blue Mountains, and Country South Australia.

Mike Cullen has recently returned to Akolade after a period as the conference producer for one of Australia's leading economic think tanks. Mike began working in the conference industry in 2007 after looking for a career change from the high pressured world of inbound customer service. Mike has worked for some of the most well-known conference and media companies in the B2B space and in his spare time is working on his first novel in a planned Epic Fantasy trilogy.

Mike’s most recently published story, Seeds of Eden, is featured in the Sproutlings Anthology released in March 2016. Mike is also editing the Anthology – Community: Tales of the LGBTI scheduled for release in June 2017.