Page 570 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 June 1989
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families the home environment often provides an essential setting to give the person the maximum quality of life experience.
Mr Speaker, the day procedures proposal will provide for Medicare patients to receive intraocular lens implants under day surgery. Over 100 Medicare patients have been on the waiting list for intraocular lens implants for more than two years. Most are recipients of the age pension and experience relatively high levels of dependency as a result of their vision problems.
The Canberra Times of 19 May 1989 contained a report about Mrs Ruby Rawlings, an elderly pensioner who had been "sitting in the dark" in a Queanbeyan nursing home for 10 years. Her two sons clubbed together and paid for her to have this eye surgery as a private patient. Because it is regarded as non-urgent surgery, Mrs Rawlings and over 100 others dependent on Medicare have had to wait.
Although not life-threatening, the quality of life that these people have without the surgery is substantially reduced from what it otherwise would be. The intraocular lens implant program will allow 100 people, such as Mrs Rawlings, to have this surgery which will enable their vision to be restored and enhance their ability to lead more independent and fuller lives.
Mr Speaker, I am strongly committed to the principle of access to high quality health care for all, irrespective of financial status. This is what Medicare has been designed to do. No community can afford all the health care services potentially available. The incentives program developed as part of the new Medicare agreement focuses on some of the areas of pressure and demand on our health care system to introduce changes which will help our limited resources to be used to the full.
As I mentioned earlier, other similar programs in Australia and overseas have been successful. For example, participation rates in a midwifery early discharge program in Newcastle were as high as 30 per cent, with no corresponding increase on demand for services within the community or return to hospitals.
Evaluation is an important component of all three of these programs. A small working group within my department is currently developing the evaluation frameworks which will be put in place to monitor the success of the programs. Together, these programs present an opportunity to develop services which enhance quality of experience and target our resources more effectively.
I present the following paper:
Medicare Incentive Program - Ministerial
statement, 29 June 1989.
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