DOWNLOAD WORD DOCUMENT: HRG Meeting Notes – End of Life 12 Feb 2025 Meeting Summary This HRG salon explored the policy challenges and opportunities for end-of-life care from two distinct perspectives: The Care of the Frail Elderly; and Voluntary Assisted Dying. 1. Care of the Frail, Elderly Terminally Ill Prof Ken Hillman led a discussion on the “Conveyor Belt” for terminally ill older people. He highlighted the inefficiencies and inhumanities associated with how the Australian healthcare system provides care
Category: Meeting Notes
:: Meeting Notes Ross Gittins’ dinner remarks Further insights into prevention: The largest leap in life expectancy occurred towards the end of the 1960s through to around 2010, where we enjoyed an unprecedented extra 20 years in life expectancy within that short period of time. Its thought this is mostly due prevention and subsequently improved treatment of cardiovascular disease (given that other determinants hadn’t changed that much during this time – prior to this period, nutrition and control communicable diseases).
Paul has offered three suggestions on what I could talk about tonight. First, an article in the Financial Times by Martin Wolf, about increased longevity, then a note on low productivity in hospitals and universities, and a third article about private health insurance and private hospitals on the Pearls and Irritations website by John Menadue. To these I could add another recent article on Pearls and Irritations by Steve Leeder, titled Keir Starmer may fix the NHS, but wholesale
5 new members were welcomed to HRG. Michael then provided an overview of the scope of his new Centre for Future Health Systems, based jointly at UNSW and The University of Oxford. The Centre has been funded by a philanthropic gift from the Ian Potter Foundation and will work at local, state, national and international levels to support research, policy development and advocacy across eight themes: Health systems reform to improve equity of access to health care services and equity
Meeting Overview Three new members were welcomed to the group. While the main purpose of the meeting was to set the agenda and approach for the year ahead, HRG’s origins, purpose and impact were also discussed throughout the evening. It was suggested that as an unincorporated, unaffiliated group of mostly senior clinicians, academics and community members operating under the Chatham House Rule, HRG occupied a unique position in being able to address healthcare policy issues from perspectives not generally represented
Chairman opened the meeting at 7 pm Numerous apologies presented and accepted Chairman expressed cautious optimism re the potential for real Healthcare reform with the new Labor government which was shared by meetings participants. Agreed that HRG should invite Health Minister to the next HRG meeting. Also agreed that a health spokesperson for the ‘Greens’ would be invited to an HRG meeting. Emphasis at meeting to be place on Implementation strategies for health related political promises made. A major disappointment
Items for discussion: What has the pandemic taught us? How does the pandemic redefine roles in the health / healthcare system, especially nursing? Where are we with integration (especially community care and aged care)? What’s happening with training pipelines and career development for junior clinicians? Tackling out-of-pocket expenses. Update on MBS Review. What has the pandemic taught us? Huge problems in the health care system have been exposed. But the system has good bones and is integral to Australia’s