Disparity Between Public And Private Health Care Organisations In Australia

Overview of the Health Care System in Australia

The paper delves into identifying a practical problem, examine the factors responsible for the problem and suggest a critically analysed solution. The study takes the Australian health industry as the background to consider the issue, problem and find solution. The first section starts with the problem in the Australian health industry which is disparity between treatment in the public and private hospitals. A detailed description from several articles help in bringing out the criticality of the problem. The next section studies the factors which help in strengthening the problem and the factors which maintain it. The final section provides solutions to the problem and analyses them. The work also has mention about the ethical, economics and CSR aspects of health sector to make the discussion more substantial. For example, the lack of government control over the health companies induces the latter to cater to the rich who can buy expensive health insurance policies. This again encourages the private nursing homes to serve the rich which can generate high revenue through unnecessary surgeries and expensive medicine. These two unethical practices again have their roots in the economic inequality in Australia and the lack of government initiative in the respect. Thus, the sections finely adhere to each other into a strong fabric to bring out the relation between the issue, factors and the solution of Australian health sector problem.

A problem in the health industry in Australia is the acute difference between public and private health care organisations. Australia is one of the fastest growing economies in the world with the best standards of living. The country is blesses with one of the best health care systems in the world. However, there exists a big difference between the public and the private health care organisations in the country.

The health care system in Australia is run by both public and private organisations to treat the Australia. These hospitals are built to treat the increasing number of patients suffering from chronic diseases like cardiac problems and diabetes which are increasing every day. These patients need acute care to save their lives or help them to maintain normal lives. Thus, the private and public hospitals were built to help these people without wasting the precious time.

The public hospitals are situated in the main towns and suburbs to provide long and short term health care systems. Government records show that these hospitals have maximum number of beds and are present in higher numbers than their private counterparts. The public hospitals serve diverse patients like highly acute, medium acute, psychiatric and outpatients. These public hospitals have 13% salaried medical officers compared to 2% in the private nursing homes. The public hospitals treat acute patients more carefully and have doctors attending the patients throughout the day (Aihw.gov.au 2017). Australians in general prefer public hospitals which see long queues of patients waiting to be treated. The staffs at public hospitals are more humane and sensitive about well being of the patients. The public hospitals have grown into centres of lifesaving medical research and innovation which have enhanced their intrinsic value.

Public and Private Health Care Organisations

The private hospitals on the other hand are institutes who normally provide treatments at higher costs. The people who can afford expensive health care and avoid public hospitals go to private nursing homes. These nursing homes are fewer than their public counterparts and have less number of beds. They employ external professionals who do not care about the patients. They normally serve the rich and usually are insensitive to the ailing people. The private nursing home authorities in order to earn more money often make patients undergo unnecessary operations. There have been cases when these private nursing homes have discharged patients because of the eccentricity instead of calming him down (Srivastava 2017). The medical staff at the private hospital treat people who have expensive health insurance plans and give them business. The doctors in these hospitals, who are mostly external identities receive fees and are lack intrinsic value.

The disparity between the public and private health care in Australia is so acute that it taints the health care industry in Australia. The aim of the health care systems in Australia should be to serve the patients in needs. The very essence of the medical profession is to save the lives and not to generate income by serving the rich. The health officers should conduct their professions in more ethical ways and fulfil their responsibilities towards the patients and the society as a whole (Taghian, D’Souza and Polonsky 2015).

Rising Inequality in Australia:

Australia is experiencing a sharp rise in inequality in income where the rich people have 70 times the assets of the poor. This rising inequality is reflecting in the service health care industry where the private organisations are serving only to rich to earn a lot of revenue. The public hospitals as a result are forced to serve a huge number of people which places pressure on their resources (Taylor 2017).

The private health care insurance companies today provide financial help to people to accede to treatments at hospitals. These companies help their clients get treated for fatal diseases which make them important players of the market. The patients who are rich buy expensive policies with several facilities and get treated in the nursing homes. The private hospitals do not treat the middle class people well who cannot afford expensive health policies and treatments (apra.gov.au 2017).

Fallacies and Cultural Beliefs:

The Australians in general prefer to get treatment at public hospitals and trust in them. The Australian society houses a large non English speaking population which does not receive proper treatment in the private nursing homes due to their cultural difference (Betancourt et al. 2016).

System Dynamics:

Factors Contributing to Disparity

The private insurance companies and the nursing homes exploit the patients. The state authorities should be strict with these organisations. They should be more sensitive and humane towards the needs of the patients in their professional conduct.

Historical Influences:

Australia has been under British rule for decades which has exploited her resources. The country is home to both the rich people and the poor Aborigines. These Aborigines are often subjected to deprivation from services at the private nursing homes. They in fact show less life expectancy compared to the non indigenous population which again points out to the injustice which they have been subjected to since historical times (Marmot 2016).

Examination of Factors Responsible for the Situation:

The factors which induced the disparity in the health care system in Australia is the lack of own resources of the private nursing homes. The private nursing homes as pointed out previously appoint practitioners who are not direct staffs. These external professionals are less responsible to the nursing home authorities for their quality of service. They are less sensitive towards the needs of the patients and refuse to treat patients who are not financially strong. These doctors make the patients undergo operations to earn extra income without considering the impact of these operations on the health of the patients.

Another factor which can be attributed for this disparity is the huge pressure of patients on the public hospitals. The majority of the patients cannot afford expensive medical plans and get admitted in the public hospitals. The rising income disparity is responsible for the gap of service in the Australian health sector (Pickett and Wilkinson 2015).

The statistical figures showing suffering of the patients are often distorted to hide the true pictures. This also encourages the private nursing homes to earn money only by serving the rich.

Having discussed the problem it can thus be stated that the solutions can be driven to eradicate such discrepancies between the public and private hospitals. As it has already been discussed in the problems statement that the employees of the public or government hospitals are salaried by the government of Australia, they are highly responsible in conducting the basic service provision to the customers- specifically the patient. Apart from the hospitals there are health care sectors where the service provision also differs. In order to bring the balance in the mode of service provision among different health care units in the country, some strategic planning needs to be taken into account by the government itself.  It has been found that the fund in the public healthcare sector is much higher than that in the private ones. As per the data retrieved from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare it has been noticed that the problems are different and the solution shall thus be based on the procured data from different sources. Analysis of the data is going to help develop the solution plan. However, if the plans do not employ the process of implementation, it is not going to help eradicate the problems. The solutions encompass different aspects of the healthcare service sector in Australia. These are:

Solutions to Address Disparities

i) Solution Related to Funding

ii) Solution Related to the Ethics of Service Provision

iii) Solution Related to the Quality of the Service provided to the Patients

iv)Solution Related to the Supply Chain Cost entailing Enhancement of the effort in Service Provision

Funding has been one of the most intricate problems of discrepancy that has drawn a line between the public and the private healthcare sectors. It has been found that 54% of funding in the public hospitals is provided by the state or territory government in Australia. Since the funding capacity of the government is much higher than that of the private organisations, it depends highly on the basic relationship between the government bodies as well as the private ones. 35% of the total funding of the public hospitals and the health care institutes depends on Australian Healthcare Agreement and Other Australian Government. The following diagram presents the detailed information pertaining to the   funding in the public healthcare units and the hospitals: 

                          

Fig: Funding Sources for the Public Hospitals

Table Showing the Funding sources for the Public Hospitals:

State and / or Territory Government	54%
Australian Health Care Agreement and other Australian Government	35%
Rebates of Health Insurance Premium	03%
Individuals	03%
Health Insurance Fund	02%
Department of Veterans  Affairs	02%
Other	01%

Another look into the funding of the private hospitals in Australia is going to clear the picture of vivid discrepancy.  61% of the total funding in the private hospitals comes from the private sources and 21% of the total funding belongs to the rebates of the health insurance premiums.  Hence, it is clear that no government intervention is noticed in terms of the findin g to the private hospitals.  The following diagram is going to show the details of the funding in the private hospitals:

                      

Fig: Funding in the Private Hospitals

The following table explains the chart:

Non Government	61%
Rebates of Health Insurance Premiums	21%
Department of Veterans Affairs	11%
Health Care Agreements Australian Government	03%
State and Territory Government	04%

After a sheer comparison between these two data, it can be said that the funding from the government sector is not balanced in both the cases.

Solution 1: If the government bodies in Australia lessen the funding from 89% to 70 % in the public hospitals so that the remainder can be donated to the private hospitals.  That means the funding details would look as follows:

Government funding in the public hospitals	70%
Government funding in the Private hospitals	20%
NGO funding in the public hospitals	10%
NGO funding in the Private hospitals	50%

 Solution 2: The NGOs or the non government organisations can reduce 10% of the funding from the private hospitals and the remaining 10% of the funding can be provided to the public hospitals.

Conclusion

ii) Solution Related to Ethics of Service Provision:

It has been found that most of the private organisations in health care department have been providing service to the patients in order to maximise profit. Private healthcare departments do not show responsibility to the greater number of the people in the country. The private hospitals and the healthcare units are found to be costly for the general mass. On the other hand, the public hospitals do not charge higher than the private ones. This is how the public hospitals become the first choice to the patients over the private ones. This problem has to be dealt with sufficient maintenance of balance. First, the funding provision can be a  better solution to the private hospitals so as to generate the cost of equipments and human resource from the government’s end. Moreover, corporate ethics of the private hospitals in terms of service provision is going to help the patients receive better service thus entailing impressive review towards the private health care sectors. The employees of the private hospitals need to develop professionalism so s to meet the requirement of the customers whom they are deployed to serve. Ethic of service provision is going to help the hospitals and other health care units develop company and customer relationship which would definitely result in a positive manner.  

Conclusion:

After understanding the problems of the related issue, it has been realised that the given solution is only going to work if proper service quality is checked in due time. Funding, service provision quality check and corporate social responsibility are some of the important measures that can be taken by both the government as well as as private healthcare organisation. 

Reference:

Aihw.gov.au. 2017. Public and private hospitals (AIHW). [online] Available at: https://www.aihw.gov.au/haag12-13/public-and-private-hospitals/ [Accessed 5 May 2017].

apra.gov.au. 2017. Competition in the Australian Private Health Insurance Market. [online] Available at: https://www.apra.gov.au/PHI/PHIAC-Archive/Documents/Competition-in-the-Australian-PHI-market_June-2015.pdf [Accessed 5 May 2017].

Betancourt, J.R., Green, A.R., Carrillo, J.E. and Owusu Ananeh-Firempong, I.I., 2016. Defining cultural competence: a practical framework for addressing racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care. Public health reports.

Marmot, M.G., 2016. Empowering Communities.

Pickett, K.E. and Wilkinson, R.G., 2015. Income inequality and health: a causal review. Social Science & Medicine, 128, pp.316-326.

Srivastava, R. 2017. The world regards Australia’s healthcare system as one of the best. It’s time we realised why | Ranjana Srivastava. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/15/the-world-regards-australias-healthcare-system-as-one-of-the-best-its-time-we-realised-why [Accessed 5 May 2017].

Taghian, M., D’Souza, C. and Polonsky, M., 2015. A stakeholder approach to corporate social responsibility, reputation and business performance. Social Responsibility Journal, 11(2), pp.340-363.

Taylor, L. (2017). Australian inequality rising as top 20% increase wealth and income – report. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/21/australian-inequality-rising-as-top-20-increase-wealth-and-income-report [Accessed 5 May 2017].