Creative Ageing Seminar

A public seminar 'From creative ageing to end-of-life in rural and remote Australia', was an integral part of this year's CouncilFest. The various presentations can be accessed from the above link. This is a valuable site for those who were unable to attend and for those who did attend but are keen to recap the salient points made by an impressive list of keynote speakers. (From: NRHA e-forum 2 December, 2009)

New reports on General Practice activity

The AIHW today released General practice activity in Australia 2008-9. This report presents results from a national study of general practice activity called the BEACH program. From April 2008 to March 2009, 1,011 general practitioners recorded data about 101,100 GP-patient encounters involving the management of 149,462 problems. For an 'average' 100 encounters, GPs recorded 106 medications, 34 clinical treatments, 17 procedures, 9 referrals to specialists and 4 to allied health services, and ordered 46 pathology and 10 imaging tests.

In addition, the AIHW published General practice activity in Australia 1999-00 to 2008-09: 10 year data tables which also stems from the BEACH program and details changes that have occurred over the last decade in the characteristics of general practitioners and the patients they see; the problems managed and the treatments provided. "In adult patients aged 18 years and over, between 1999–00 and 2008–09 prevalence of overweight increased from 33% to 36%, obesity from 19% to 25%, daily smoking decreased from 19% to 15% and at-risk alcohol consumption remained static at 26%."

More than 85% of the population visit a GP at least once in any year. From March 2008 to April 2009, there were about 112 million general practice consultations paid for by Medicare, up from 101 million in 1999–00; an average of 5.1 per person, a similar visit rate to 1999–00 (5.4 visits per head). The GPs themselves are aging, feminising and becoming more qualified.

Draft Australian Guidelines on ADHD

The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) have made available updated draft Australian Guidelines on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) Due to an ongoing investigation in the US, the Council of the NHMRC has not been able to ratify the guidelines as yet, but the draft is accessible.

More than 350,000 Australian children and adolescents are estimated to have ADHD and this draft updates the guidelines published in 2005 which have now been withdrawn. The NHMRC site linked to above also contains other useful information to assist parents and medical professionals in treating and recognising ADHD, including a systematic literature review.

Anonymous NSW Hospital Blog

The latest issue of the British Medical Journal reports on how Australian hospital staff have set up an anonymous blog to voice concerns about cutbacks. Called "Who Will Speak for Us" the blog is being used to draw public attention to their concerns about cutbacks to service. The link to the blog is http://whowillspeakforus.blogspot.com/

The website says, "It has to be anonymous because all staff of Sydney West Area Health Service are required not to speak to the media as part of their employment contract. Where is the accountability of the system if staff are gagged?" The bloggers from Katoomba Hospital, west of Sydney, have taken elaborate steps to protect their anonymity.

Life Tables, Australia, 2006–2008

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released Life Tables 2006-2008. A life table is a statistical model used to represent mortality of a population. In its simplest form, a life table is generated from age-specific death rates and the resulting values are used to measure mortality, survivorship and life expectancy. NSW life tables for 2001-2003 onwards are also available at the ABS site.

Indigenous health report - concerns for males

The AMA has released its eighth Indigenous Health Report Card, this year putting the focus on the tragic state of health of Indigenous males - boys, adolescents and men. It found, for example, that an Indigenous boy born during 2005-2007 can expect to die at age 67, nearly six years earlier than an Indigenous girl, and 11.5 years earlier than a non-Indigenous boy born in the same period. Also, in 2004-06, Indigenous males were more than twice as likely to be hospitalised for mental health and behavioural disorders than non-Indigenous males.

Fourth National Mental Health Plan 2009-14

The fourth national mental health plan: an agenda for collaborative government action in mental health 2009-2014 has been released by the Australian Department of Health and Ageing. This plan identifies key actions and priority areas for developing "a mental health system that enables recovery, that prevents and detects mental illness early and ensures appropriate treatment and community support for all Australians with a mental illness."

The plan has five priority areas for government action in mental health:
* Social inclusion and recovery
* Prevention and early intervention
* Service access, coordination and continuity of care
* Quality improvement and innovation and
* Accountability - measuring and reporting progress.

Systematic reviews for Managers

The PPD/CCNC database is a searchable repository of over 800 systematic reviews about health policy, finance and management. Developed by McMaster University's Program in Policy Decision Making (PPD) in partnership with the Canadian Cochrane Network and Centre (CCNC), this database provides links to abstracts, user-friendly summaries and full-text reports whenever possible.

"To help managers and policymakers find and use these reviews, we’ve identified as many management- and policy-relevant reviews as possible, categorized them in ways that will make it easy to retrieve citation details and summaries of them (whenever possible), and made the database available online."

Proposed Denticare scheme explained

The Parliamentary Library has released a Background Note providing an outline of the proposed Denticare scheme, including the dental services to be covered, cost estimates and financing arrangements. Responses to the proposal and some key issues for further discussion are highlighted.

Quality Care at the End of Life

Presentations from Palliative Care Australia Conference are now available for download. "Together! Cultural connections for quality care at the end of life", was held in Perth in September 2009 and has over 50 papers to look at including clinical, spirituality, rural, ethical, aged, paediatric and nursing issues . Run by Palliative Care Australia, they also have some excellent Resources to download on their website.

Alcohol & other drug treatment services in Australia

Alcohol continues to be the number one drug of concern for Australians seeking treatment for drug or alcohol issues, according to a report released on Saturday by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
The report, Alcohol and other drug treatment services in Australia 2007-08: report on the National Minimum Data Set, found that treatment for alcohol issues has continued to increase, with treatment for alcohol comprising 44% of treatment episodes in 2007-08 compared with 38% in 2002-03. Alcohol treatment was followed by treatments for cannabis (22% of treatment episodes), amphetamines (11%) and heroin (11%).

Counselling was the most common form of treatment followed by withdrawal management.

Addiction, free will & self control

Download the transcript & audio "Addiction, free will & self control" from the ABC Radio National All In The Mind program. Join Natasha Mitchell and guests in a roundtable interrogation of how the brain sciences are changing our understanding of addiction, and the powerful consequences for notions of free will, responsibility and culpability. At the end of the transcript are some excellent references to recent articles, books and links to other relevant All in the Mind programs.

Centre for Evidence Based Practice Australasia

The Royal Melbourne Hospital continues to lead the way in developing online evidence based clinical knowledge resources by launching a virtual Centre for Evidence Based Practice Australasia . CEBPA is not a typical website but an evolving 'cloud' (or collection) of EBP resources from across Australia and New Zealand, with particular emphasis on Australasian content. The aims of CEBPA are:
1. to provide an additional layer of resources to that already provided by Australasian EBP sites,
2. to provide a central point for Australasia-wide EBP collaboration, learning and knowledge-sharing and
3. to facilitate the translation of (evidence-based) knowledge into action.

The Royal Melbourne Hospital Director of Education, A/Prof Peter Morley, said: “The CEBPA fills a gap in the current health infrastructure and potentially plays a major role in improving the quality of healthcare. There is also potential for saving costs across diverse areas of healthcare, with flow-on benefits in clinical audit, clinical governance and safety."

To view the CEBPA cloud, go to http://www.cebpa.info/ and click on Login, then follow the prompts. Once you have logged on you will then see an expanded Menu (as well as expanded discussion forums).

Patient Survey 2009 Statewide Report

The Patient Survey 2009 Statewide report has been released and summarises findings from the NSW Health Patient Survey, covering seven patient categories across the vast majority of public healthcare facilities in NSW. Surveyed patients were treated in February 2009 and the report is supported by each of nine NSW Area Health Services.

NSW Health has also made available the Patient Survey 2009 Summary in powerpoint form and details the experience of patients in 2009. It gives feedback about patient experience obtained from over 220,000 patients across NSW. 322 facilities/services across NSW participated in the 2009 survey.

NSW Government releases report on health reforms

The NSW Government yesterday released the first six month report of the independent panel set up to report on the implementation of the Caring Together reforms. The report also includes an audit on the progress of the reforms. “As described by John Walsh, the Government has moved swiftly to act and today six months on from the release of our Caring Together Health Action Plan for NSW, we are pleased to reach this milestone and release of the independent report,” Ms Tebbutt said.
However the Sydney Morning Herald headlines on November 19 state "Doctors sick of failure to fix ailing hospitals". "Since Peter Garling, SC, handed down his landmark report a year ago, calling for an urgent overhaul of the state's hospital system, little has changed on the ground, the survey conducted for the Australian Medical Association and the Australian Salaried Medical Officers concluded." AMA (NSW) President Dr Brian Morton said the Independent Panel’s review of the State Government’s Caring Together reforms highlighted the need to better engage health professionals in hospital decision making.