Aging population stats 

As per the data of Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2018) more than 3.5 million people were above the age of 65 in the year 2016.
Within this half of the older people confesses some degree of disability, or ailment but three-quarters of the pollution confesses that health status is good due to the available healthcare amenities


Further the stats also revealed that half of Australia's older people (57%, or 2.1 million) were aged 65–74, one-third were aged 74–84 (30%, or 1.1 million), and 13% were aged 85 and over (487,000).

• This stats are expected to grow tremendously by the year 2046 as  35% will be 74–84 years, and 19% will be 85 or above (National Institutes of Health  2018). 

Healthcare policies for aged population 

• As the healthcare related needs of Australian aged population is growing, the government is trying to resolve all the non communicable conditions and trying to incorporate different healthcare service

• such as inpatient, outpatient services, healthcare homes and community care services so that all the healthcare concerns of such population, living in a specific community can be addressed (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2018).

Stats related to healthcare services for aged population is Australia 

• As per the data of Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2018) , every 3 in 10 Medicare claims comes from an aged person over 65 years of age.

• 8 in 10 aged individual receives community care or home care facility as well as residential care facility.

• s per the data, more than 6.2 million people aged over 65 claimed Medicare in the year 2015 (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare  2018).

The challenges of healthcare services in Australia 

• The primary challenge for Australia healthcare system is to understand the cumulative need of aged population of multi cultural Australian aged population as well as managing their emergence of chronic disease (Department of Health 2018).

• To determine it, the Australian Health Survey conducted a study as per which, the most common long-term health conditions are arthritis (49%), Hypertensive disease (38%), hearing loss (35%), vascular diseases (22%), diabetes (15%) and cancer (7%) (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare  2018). 

Community care service in Australia 

• Community healthcare services are one of the important aspect of aged care services in Australia which is funded by both public and private healthcare facilities.

• These community bases services helps in specific activities such as

immunization services;

smoking cessation programs

Providing aged care and awareness programs

nutrition awareness campaigns and

weight loss programs

Community care service in Australia 

• The Australian Government sanctions a large amount of healthcare funding for medical services as well as it helps to subsidize the medications for the population using community healthcare services. 

• Such community healthcare services are mostly used by indigenous communities, non-Australian origin communities such as Greek, Chinese and Indian communities as their food, diet and medication culture are different from the medication culture followed in Australia (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2018).

• The diseases which are being covered using community healthcare services are:

• Chronic disease management

• Disability services

• Health promotional camps,

• Mental health services

• Refugee health services

• Substance abuse services

• Childcare and allied health services

Characteristics of this service 

• It helps to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare services for aged population of a specific community by providing them culturally competent healthcare services (McPake and Mahal  2017).
• It improves the care quality by ensuring that the patients receive right care at right time.
• it also aligns with the primary healthcare system so that compliance to the healthcare standards can be determined (Shrivastava, Shrivastava and Ramasamy 2013).

• This helps to provide community care services to people with low and middle socio-economic services as they are unable to apply for such treatment services due to their financial inability (Luckett et al. 2014).

Effectiveness 

• While determining the effectiveness of community care services it should be mentioned that due to such services aged populations are able to get personalized geriatric services .

• As maximum of the aged population is Australia living away from their children, community healthcare system is an effective way to provide them, with their culturally competent care (Bauer et al. 2013).
• To determine the effectiveness of such service, researches conducted surveys among the population of New South Wales, Australia in 2006, and found that most of the population was associated with community care services (48%) or used such services in the past (Hoogendijk 2016).
• The effectiveness of the service can be determined using two aspects such as

Clinical effectiveness and

Population effectiveness

Clinical effectiveness- It provided the aboriginals and Torres strait islanders with different costly medication and also provided free healthcare interventions as per their cultural competency so that the right to healthcare can be provided to them.

Population effectiveness- it ensures the healthcare quality among the aboriginals and Torres strait islanders predominantly in the outskirts and rural areas of Australia determining its effectiveness (Willis, Reynolds and Keleher 2016).

• The efficiency of community healthcare service for aged population of Australia can be determined from the fact that it targets multiple assets of healthcare system so that a holistic care starting from diagnosis to Medicare to pharmaceuticals to geriatric care can be provided to the aged communities if Australia (Ansari et al. 2012).

• The efficiency of the community healthcare service can be determined using three aspects –

• Production efficiency on population perspective

• Production efficiency on clinical perspective

• Allocative efficiency

• Production efficiency (on population perspective ) -

The community healthcare services are appropriate for aged population as while living Alone or distant from their children, aged individuals require cost effective and quality care at the same time. therefore, on this basis it is emerged as one of the most cost effective care service (Drew, Kortt and Dollery 2014).

• Production efficiency (on clinical perspective) –

On the basis of clinical efficiency, the community care service is comprised of registered nurses, profound physicians and clinicians, and other experienced care service professionals so that quality interventions could care can be provided to the older adults.

• Allocative efficiency –

It refers to the Application and merger of other health care strategies such as mental healthcare, psychological care and Medicare facility so that in the process of care process can be applied properly (Willis, Reynolds and Keleher 2016).

Equity 

• Equity can be determined using two aspects of clinical and population perspective.

Clinical/population perspective

• Procedural equity – The community care process for aged care is provided to the all the communities throughout the Australia fairly and does not depends on any specific socio economic classes (Carey et al. 2013).

• Substantive equity – these services are also free of disparity as it is substantially equal for all the aged individuals of Australia (Thomas, Wakerman and Humphreys 2015).

Recommendations 

• As the healthcare system is still changing and needs of elderly population is emerging, there is a set of recommendations that should be followed.

• The aged care should be provided to the patients as community service depending on their priority and they must be allowed to move readily from home and ambulatory care settings (McPake and Mahal 2017).

• Besides community care, Medical assessment, therapeutic care, restorative efforts and rehabilitative should also be supported in community care settings.

• The community care centers should also provide long time care with short term care process.

• The government should provide funding to the researchers so that measure and compare outcomes and the relative costs can be researched (Luckett et al. 2014).

References

• Ansari, Z., Haider, S.I., Ansari, H., de Gooyer, T. and Sindall, C., 2012. Patient characteristics associated with hospitalisations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions in Victoria, Australia. BMC health services research, 12(1), p.475.

• Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2018). Ageing and the health system: challenges, opportunities and adaptations.

[online] Aihw.gov.au. Available at: https://www.aihw.gov.au/getmedia/19dbc591-b1ef-4485-80ce-029ff66d6930/6_9-health-ageing.pdf.aspx [Accessed 18 Aug. 2018].

• Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2018). Australia's health 2016, Chapter 2 Australia's health system - AustralianInstitute of Health and Welfare. [online] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Available at: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/australias-health-2016/contents/health-system [Accessed 18 Aug. 2018].

• Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2018). Older Australia at a glance, Health care—GPs and specialists - AustralianInstitute of Health and Welfare. [online] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Available at: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/older-people/older-australia-at-a-glance/contents/service-use/health-care-gps-and-specialists [Accessed 18 Aug. 2018].

• Bauer, M., McAuliffe, L., Nay, R. and Chenco, C., 2013. Sexuality in older adults: Effect of an education intervention on attitudes and beliefs of residential aged care staff. Educational Gerontology, 39(2), pp.82-91.

• Carey, T.A., Wakerman, J., Humphreys, J.S., Buykx, P. and Lindeman, M., 2013. What primary health care services should residents of rural and remote Australia be able to access? A systematic review of “core” primary health care services. BMChealth services research, 13(1), p.178.

• gov (2018). An aging world. [online] Census.gov. Available at: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p95-16-1.pdf [Accessed 18 Aug. 2018].

• Department of Health (2018). Department of Health | Primary health care and Indigenous health: Australia. [online] Health.gov.au. Available at: https://www.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/health-oatsih-pubs-linkphc~health-oatsih-pubs-linkphc-changes~changes3 [Accessed 18 Aug. 2018].

• Drew, J., Kortt, M.A. and Dollery, B., 2014. Economies of scale and local government expenditure: evidence from Australia. Administration & Society, 46(6), pp.632-653.

• Hoogendijk, E.O., 2016. How effective is integrated care for community-dwelling frail older people? The case of the Netherlands. Age and ageing, 45(5), pp.585-588.

• Katz, E.B., Carrier, E.R., Umscheid, C.A. and Pines, J.M., 2012. Comparative effectiveness of care coordination interventions in the emergency department: a systematic review. Annals of emergency medicine, 60(1), pp.12-23.

• Luckett, T., Phillips, J., Agar, M., Virdun, C., Green, A. and Davidson, P.M., 2014. Elements of effective palliative care models: a rapid review. BMC health services research, 14(1), p.136.

• McPake, B. and Mahal, A., 2017. Addressing the Needs of an Aging Population in the Health System: The Australian Case. Health Systems & Reform, 3(3), pp.236-247.

• National Institutes of Health (2018). World’s older population grows dramatically. [online] National Institutes of Health (NIH). Available at: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/worlds-older-population-grows-dramatically [Accessed 18 Aug. 2018].

• Shrivastava, S.R.B.L., Shrivastava, P.S. and Ramasamy, J., 2013. Health?care of Elderly: Determinants, Needs and Services. International journal of preventive medicine, 1(1), pp.1224-5.

• Thomas, S.L., Wakerman, J. and Humphreys, J.S., 2015. Ensuring equity of access to primary health care in rural and remote Australia-what core services should be locally available?. International journal for equity in health, 14(1), p.111.

• UNITED NATIONS (2015). Profiles of Ageing 2015. [online] Esa.un.org. Available at: https://esa.un.org/unpd/popdev/Profilesofageing2015/index.html [Accessed 18 Aug. 2018].

• Willis, E., Reynolds, L. and Keleher, H. eds., 2016. Understanding the Australian health care system. Elsevier Health Sciences.