Australia's health system—A brief description

✍ Scribed by John Dewdney

• Book ID: 102255522
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1987
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 387 KB
• Volume: 2
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0749-6753
• DOI: 10.1002/hpm.4740020507

✦ Synopsis

With a land area of 7.68 million square kilometres, Australia ranks sixth in size among the countries of the world, but about 85 per cent of the 15.5 million population live in the south-east corner of the island continent. Highly urbanized, more than two-thirds of the population are housed in one or other of the six state capital cities, the national capital Canberra, or Darwin. Only 14 per cent of the population were designated 'rural' at the 1981 national census.

HEALTH CARE PROVISION AND FINANCE

Although in Australia health care is delivered through a mixed system of providers -government, quasi-or non-government non-profit-seeking and private profit-seeking agencies plus private professional practitionersthree-quarters of all the funds enter the system through government channels. State governments have major legislative responsibility in health matters and, with the local government authorities which have some involvement in health matters, currently control about one-third of total health service expenditure. The Commonwealth, however, is directly responsible for the national Medicare, Pharmaceutical Benefits, Nursing Home Benefits, and war veterans' health care programs, the quarantine service, and it also provides substantial financial assistance to a wide range of health and health-related activities including medical research. Overall, it controls