Inquiry into Primary Care and Aged Care Services

On 5 April 2011, the Legislative Council agreed to the following motion:

That this House requires the Economy and Infrastructure References Committee to inquire into, consider and report on the measurement, including budget measures, of primary health and aged care services and outcomes, and in particular whether —

(1)     Australia, like most other western countries, should mandate the provision of information on the reasons people receive primary care
          treatments i.e. epidemiological coding according to the International Classification of Primary Care or similar;

(2)     Australia should mandate the provision of waiting times and waiting lists for primary care services;

(3)     Australia should mandate the requirement for provision of information about outcome measures, such as appropriate treatment for all
         patients with diabetes in primary care settings, appropriate treatments for asthma in those settings and so on;

(4)     conditions for which hospitalisations can be avoided should be considered a surrogate for the adequacy of our primary health care
          system;

(5)     actual rates of provision of residential aged care for each community should be provided, as opposed to bed ratios;

(6)     comparable rates of community care alternatives should be provided for these communities;

(7)     quality criteria for residential aged care across a community and for each individual setting should be more clearly available and 
         provided; and

(8)     potentially unnecessary or avoidable hospitalisations of patients in residential care should be used as a surrogate indicator for poor 
          care in these settings.

and that the Committee present its final report to Parliament no later than 12 months after this reference is given to the Committee.