Preventable hospital stays cost $7.7 billion a year
Nursing and midwifery leaders will gather at Parliament House today to press the Federal Government to refresh Medicare and curb about $7.7 billion a year in preventable hospitalisations.
Australia has almost 410,000 employed registered nurses, nurse practitioners and midwives. However, current funding rules stop many from using their full training in community care.
Nearly one-third of primary health care nurses are not routinely working to the full extent of their expertise. That untapped capacity could help a primary care system under heavy strain.
Australia records higher rates of preventable hospitalisation than the OECD average. Those rates are also worse than in Canada and the United Kingdom, despite higher per-person health spending than most OECD countries.
Many of those avoidable admissions involve chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart failure and chronic respiratory disease. Nurses are trained to help prevent and manage those illnesses in the community.
Evidence in the briefing links nurse-led chronic disease care with fewer hospital admissions and fewer readmissions. More than 40% of the nursing and midwifery workforce already works outside hospitals.
Scope of Practice Review
The organisations want ministers to act on the Scope of Practice Review and other primary care reviews. They also want nurse-led primary care funding, MyMedicare access for nurse-led clinics, bulk-billing incentives and broader multidisciplinary funding for Endorsed Midwives.
At the Showcase of Contemporary Nursing and Midwifery, hosted by ACN’s Parliamentary Friends of Nursing, the groups plan to demonstrate services already used in primary care. Those services include skin cancer checks, wound closure, advanced rural and remote care, and maternity care for mothers and babies.
ACN chief executive Adjunct Professor Kathryn Zeitz said, “Australians are rightly proud of Medicare, but the system is under extraordinary pressure, and we are failing to make the most of our most distributed clinical workforce.”
Zeitz also pointed to previous inquiries. She said the Scope of Practice Review and repeated primary healthcare reviews have already mapped out the changes governments need to make.
In small rural towns, there are five nurses for every medical professional. Yet current funding arrangements still limit what nurses can provide in those communities.
Midwifery groups are making a parallel case in maternity care. Privately practising midwives deliver the most positive birth experiences and the lowest rates of birth trauma, but they account for just over 2% of maternity services.
The current public hospital maternity model costs the health system 20% more than continuity of midwifery care in community-based group practice or birth centre settings. Evidence for continuity of care is well established in both clinical outcomes and workforce sustainability.
Groups backing the push include the Australian College of Nursing, the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses, the Australian College of Midwives, the Australian College of Nurse Practitioners, the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, the Australian Primary Health Care Nurses Association, the Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives, the Council of Deans of Nursing and Midwifery, and CRANAplus.
