Australian Doctor Australia Doctor 18th August 2017 | Page 11

News Review
Inside your new
Health Care Home
Still don’t know
what a Health
Care Home is?
PAUL SMITH
offers a guided
tour.
I
IT’S the biggest GP reform since
Medicare, D-day is a few months
away, but not many GPs are aware
of what is going on. For those who
are, there seems to be more unan-
swered questions than in the plot-
line of Lost.
Yes, welcome to your new
Health Care Home.
The current political rumbles
are focused on practices pulling
out of the trial. Two hundred were
meant to be signed up by 21 July.
Some 27 have already said no and
a further 70, at the time of going
to press, have yet to put ink on the
contracts.
You could argue these are the
soon-to-be-forgotten
teething
AN ALGORITHM ... WILL DECIDE HOW
MUCH FUNDING PRACTICES WILL RECEIVE
TO MANAGE THE CHRONIC DISEASES OF THE
PATIENTS THEY REGISTER.
problems of any health reform.
The actual making or breaking of
Health Care Homes and the won-
ders they are meant to offer could
lie with something more mundane.
Risk stratification
It’s an algorithm, a so-called risk
stratification tool, that will decide
how much funding practices will
receive to manage the chronic dis-
eases of the patients they register.
Does Marge, a 40-year-old, with
type 1 diabetes and good glycaemic
control receive the lowest level of
funding fixed at $600 a year? What
about Imran, the teenager recently
diagnosed with schizophrenia? Will
his health status trigger the $1600
www.australiandoctor.com.au
a year available to those with more
complex problems?
The questions are important
because if this algorithm goes hay-
wire, a lot of high-cost patients
could end up with low-cost fund-
ing, potentially crippling the
financial viability of the practice
entering this Brave New World.
The company leading this aspect
of the trial is Precedence Health
Care.
Its CEO, Professor Michael
Georgeff, a computer scientist and