Contemporary, industrial healthcare systems have understandably been designed to be sharply focused on the treatment of human illness, with the domination of incentives focused on activity (e.g. fee-for-service medicine; activity-based funding) have been suggested as a major contributor to this orientation.
While this has encouraged a form of innovation that has driven the unprecedented expansion of population lifespan, more recent decades have failed to deliver a concomitant dividend in healthspan.
In Australia, the AIHW 2023 Burden of Disease Report indicates that while Australians are living longer, there has been little change in the proportion of life spent in full health. The same report identifies a significant expansion of potentially preventable chronic diseases as the cause for this stasis in healthspan.
Moral and medium- to long-term economic imperatives strengthen the case for re-balancing investment and incentives in healthcare systems from the reactive treatment of chronic disease, to the prevention of said diseases.
This HRG Policy Reform Theme seeks to explore, distill and prosecute policy innovations that encourage a high impact focus on prevention, with a consequent expectation of improvement in population healthspan.
Related Material
AIHW Burden of Disease Report (2023)
Australian Preventative Health Strategy 2021-2030 (2021)
McKinsey Health Institute – Adding Years to Life and Life to Years (2022)