Australia’s current Federal Health Minister, Sussan Ley, has embarked on a review of Medicare particularly the Medical Benefits Schedule (MBS) and complex and chronic conditions in Primary Health Care known as the Healthier Medicare Initiative. This is an exciting development in the move to the broader adoption of Outcomes based medicine in Australia, with its promise of better health outcomes while making Medicare more sustainable.
As eHealthier shares the goal of a healthier Australia we believe that the introduction of a Medicare item that incentivises Primary Care Physicians to utilise ePROMs as part of their Care Plans and in particular includes newer ePROMs such as probability of repeated hospital readmissions measures. This would be a first step to reaching this goal.
Should Australia decide to include the next generation of personal ePROMs i.e. Preventive (risk factor) and “Cared-For” ePROMs in the MBS item numbers not only will Medicare be financially healthier it will result in a healthier Australian population.