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Getting your medical workforce to fit your funding

Categories: Site News, Drafts, Public, Roundup Issue #16 | Author: KateTynan | Posted: 23/07/2013 | Views: 1560

Our recent Medical Workforce meeting in Brisbane brought together over 90 representatives of health services across Australia and New Zealand to discuss the new imperative that health services must live within their activity-based funding budgets.  Health Roundtable staff explained the clinical costing reports produced for over 40 health services, that detail the notional funds available under ABF for each "bucket" of costs -- medical, ward, pathology, imaging, etc.  Using this approach for the typical inpatient episode worth about $5,000, there is approximately $1000 per standard episode available to fund medical staff.  

 The difficulty for most health services is that little is known about the actual time spent by medical staff treating patients.  Medical staff have many roles in addition to their clinical work, and often have multiple sources of funding.  Although substantial progress is being made in reducing overtime costs, much work needs to be done to develop appropriate staffing models for medical staff.  The Workforce group plans to meet again in October to share the results of a one-month analysis of medical staff worked time and workload across member health services to highlight different approaches to medical staffing.  For the Meeting Briefing document, click here.  To find out more about this group, contact Kate Tynan at 0417 481 661 

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