The health economics symposium rose the question over how effective health economics is being applied into Australia’s healthcare system.
This week’s Health Economics Symposium was an eye-opening experience for attendees in understanding how the struggles of health economics intertwine with clinical issues.
Health economics has always been paramount to healthcare, but now with discourse over financial issues such as bulk billing, the study has become more focal to the future of Australian health.
“It’s the inertia towards that opportunity that we need to address and move towards, and the conversation needs to take us there,” CEO of Research Australia Nadia Levin told the symposium.
“Closing that gap is about productivity, it means high value jobs, it means sovereign capability, and of course, it means a more resilient economy.
“To achieve this, we need national collaboration, better investment in research and data infrastructure that’s tied to measurable income.”
With these financial pressures in mind, it was advocated for that further investment into health economics research would help with evaluating the current healthcare system before pushing for reform.
Researchers from the symposium argued for health economics’ benefit to health service research in how it directly engages with the end user.
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“I think that really makes our research applied and relevant and more likely to be implemented,” Australian Health Economics Society executive member Dr Elizabeth Huynh said.
“Embedding health economists in the healthcare system seems like a natural fit, but it’s really hard to do.”
Two approaches were suggested for this integration:
- Build capacity within current clinical research teams to also become involved in health economics.
- Embedding health economists directly into the healthcare system, with John Karnon’s work in South Australia of implementing cost-effectiveness models within healthcare given as an example.
However panel did have common ground on one key foundation for the health system – the need for dedicated funding streams.
“As researchers, we want to make data driven decisions about how we might change things,” Dr Huynh said.
“I think there’s also an element of making sure it’s really clear the impact of health services and health economics research.
“What we’ve seen is a lot of health services research being submitted as clinical research or public health research, because the health services research stream has such a poor reputation for funding rates.”
How research was implemented into health policy has also reportedly seen division.
This division has come as a result of a misalignment of timelines between research and the corresponding policy, with Telstra Health managing director Elizabeth Koff citing the directional changes of policy as the common cause.
“With policy, it’s fast, needs to be impactful, whereas research, it’s longer,” Ms Koff said.
“Having academics that can be embedded in a policy setting may sort of align that timeline between that policy and research.
“Health Economics is much more long-term, and our impact is also very system level, and it’s really hard to sort of demonstrate that.”
