Funding Models Forum 2017 - Opening remarks

As I said, I sort of am here really to facilitate but also to give some kind of context to this session, a little bit in terms of where we were at in the department with our funding approaches. Before I kick off that I do need to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which we meet this morning, the people of the Kulin Nation and pay my respects to their elders past and present and any of the Aboriginal community who are with us today either in person or via webinar. I'd also like to thank you for making the time available on what is a wet and miserable kind of day outside to make your way here today to talk to us about kind of funding policy in the directions for 17-18, excuse me. I think it's important probably just to start the session with commenting around kind of how the department goes about its thinking around policy for funding models and funding model changes and put that into a little bit of context for you in terms of the way that we in Victoria manage our revenues from the Commonwealth terms of their hospital funding but also our payments out to you. So it is important I think to kind of put in context that whilst we've got a long history of activity funding for hospitals services particularly inpatient services in Victoria we are constantly evolving, reviewing and revising our funding models and trying to deliver the best care possible with the limited resources, and they are limited, there is an a finite pool of resources that we have available to us in the state.

We have worked really hard I think to make sure that our models are contemporary and that we continue to advance funding policy and funding models across Australia and I guess that's kind of highlighted by the number of not only jurisdictional representations that we have come to talk to us in Victoria or out around the models that we've put in place but also around the international interest with a lot of delegations from Singapore and China particularly coming to talk to us about how they implement ABF funding models into their own systems, so Victoria is a bit of a front-runner in this space and we need to continue to kind of make sure that our models are contemporary, as I said but also making sure that they are providing our own system stability across kind of the years, year-on-year. We do use a mixed model so whilst we are very focused on ABF and particularly in the national context of ABF and the agreement we have with our commonwealth friends to move as much of our activity funding, or our funding into activity-based models and we do use a mixed model so we still do have block funding models in place and we are moving towards more and more capitation models as well.

So I think it's making sure that we are aligning as much as possible to the national model and making sure that we are also maintaining our focus on delivering patient care and the funding policy and the models being able to support that. You know we do have a chronic disease kind of epidemic, I think it is fair to say, and ABF funding models have not necessarily been proven to be anywhere in the world particularly well suited to that that cohort which is again one of the reasons why we're moving towards some other models and targeting our models. But in saying that moving to a ABF is actually proven to be over the last twenty four years or so and I won't steal Ben's thunder who's going to talk a little bit more about history but you know a long history in the ABF model and that has proven to drive some efficiencies a lot of efficiencies our  Hospital models to be able to get the best value out of the dollars that we put in. We are about making sure that our funding models are as much as possible driving kind of the policy objectives of government and that is not government of the day but broadly the government and the citizenry that we serve, making sure that we are you know as I said producing the value that we need to produce out of the resources that we have available to us and actually making sure that we are kind of delivering the best value care that we can for individual patients. I think it's fair to say that over the last sort of few months there's been a number of significant changes in the funding models going forward for 2017-18 - some of which has been very late in its communication to you so I would like to acknowledge that our communication this year around our funding policy changes have been quite has been quite late there's a number of reasons for that a few significant challenges we found in things like DRG 8 but also unexpected I guess in terms of the way in which the approach has been in terms of the relationship we have with the Commonwealth as well, around some of our kind of ongoing I'll say debates with them about how they apply different funding.

So just to put that in context and I'm going to just name it upfront you know we can get better at our communication we can certainly get better at making sure that you're engaged earlier with the changes because we recognize that there has been some challenges in actually for you in terms of thinking about how you apply the model or the models as we go forward in the changes. I want to make sure that people are aware that today will cover off kind of the funding policy changes that are being kind of introduced for 17' -18' that includes our updates to existing funding models, like the WIES weight re-basing our kind of models and additions for things that are you know endovascular clot retrieval and also the specialist clinics model so we'll cover off those things today. I think it's important also that what we'll cover off is the emergency funding model and the changes to DVA which I think will be of interest to other people in the room as well. As I said before the changes that we make are really about trying to support patient care and better patient care within the resources that we have and delivering better value for individual patients but also for the system more broadly and so while there are impacts potentially, differential impacts between health services, our job as system manager is trying to keep the kind of budget in check across the whole of the system and how we manage that across the different health service present you know providers that we have.

As I said I think one of the opportunities going forward for us in terms of communication is just to alert you that we have a pricing and funding reference group we have had that in place for about the last months it has included CEOs, CFOs and COOs, we are revitalizing that moving into 2017-18 that will include more of the CEO presence on it and really it is through this group we will be trying to ensure that we are discussing our policy decisions and you know thinking around this in terms of both adaptions to existing models and introduction of new models but also through making sure that we are tracking the changes that are happening in '17 - 18 ' with any of the model introductions that we are putting in place. That will be the group sort of you know where we will touch base with what's actually happening on the ground. So in closing my part of the session and making sure that I give enough time to presenters to get through their material, I just want to say thanks again we've now got 31 people on webinar so we're growing as we go I will interrupt it at the end of the presentations and try and read these questions so you'll get sick of me by the by 12 o'clock but I do hope you find the forum helpful, it is an exchange so as I said we're here to present some information but we're also here to hear from you in terms of concerns, challenges, queries, opportunities for development and opportunities for engagement, so please feel free to as I said ask questions during the session or to catch one of the department staff afterwards. So thanks very much again our first presenter but unless there's any questions of me to start with that I'm assuming you'll catch me in you'll see me for a while so that might come to mind later